Of Rides & Roads & Stuff

Where is he now?

2010-12-21T15:29:00.000-06:00

Right now he's at the mission office...waiting for the his first assignent.

View Kenny's Mission Areas in a larger map

Goodbye Ride...and catching up

2010-06-05T11:51:00.004-05:00

This morning, 5:30 to be exact, I rolled my bike out of the garage to ride a last ride with Jake. Jake is moving across the country and we decided to get one more ride in before he leaves tomorrow. It's been a while since we've ridden together, scheduling and mundane tasks such as child rearing and being husbands always seemed to get in the way.

Anyway we rolled down to 119 and 280 and did a loop out to Dunavant and back, some mild climbing, lots of rollers and a short steep whack over Hugh Daniels Drive. I didn't have the legs to get as deep as my cardio system was willing to let me go this morning, so the ride was a bit of a struggle. Jake is in far better shape than I am, as he is peaking for the Wasatch Back running race next weekend.

But isn't the essence of training that either your legs or your lungs are always trying to catch up to the other. Peaking is bringing those systems into sync at the highest level you can manage. The rest of the time it's just suffering.

I've been doing the Thursday night (climbing centric) rides lately instead of the Tuesday night speedfests. I'll probably add the Tuesday rides back in starting in July. My main goal for the year, Cherohala, was canceled because of a rockslide over the road that wouldn't be cleared in time for the ride to happen. Oh well, there's always next year.

Meanwhile, I'll keep riding...there's alway Huntsville in September.

Morningside...an old man died

2010-02-02T14:18:00.002-06:00

(yeah it's a very obscure Neil Diamond song)

This morning I decided to turn a different way and give my climbing legs an early season test by crossing Red Mountain via Morningside Drive, a nice 4/10's mile of 15% torture.

Test result...close to failure. Maybe in another month I'll take another crack at it.

It's good for you!

2010-01-20T10:39:00.004-06:00

I remember sitting at the dinner table aghast at the slices of purple beets staining everything on my plate with their unholy blood-like juice. My parents said I wasn't allowed to leave the table until I'd eaten them, and thus ensued a battle of wills that lasted for years. Oh, I ate the beets, that time...and any other time I was unfortunate enough to get caught at the dinner table on a night we were served this vile weed, but I managed to skip dinner more often than the times I had to eat the wretched beets. Though I never cried about it, as one young man I know did once when I told him he had to eat the tiniest piece of broccoli I'd ever seen. Why did my parents make me eat beets? Why did I make my son try his broccoli? The reason given in both instances was that they were good for us.

Now, the question is, was it the vegetable itself that was good for us, or the growth we experienced from sucking it up and trying something we knew we'd never touch again?

Which brings me to my next thought. If you have a competitive nature, humiliation is good for you. Yesterday I mentioned that I had followed up one of my worst seasons of riding ever with one of my best ever, and that following last season's debacle, I was hoping for a similar effect in 2010. As I pondered this question on my ride to work this morning, the reason became clear.

A few years ago, my friend Russ bought a bike and started riding. I hadn't done much on the bike the year before, and one day we were out for a ride, and I found myself dropping further and further behind on a climb I should never have suffered on. Russ beat me to the top of that road by several minutes. I was humiliated and swore that he would never again beat me to the top of a climb. I worked and trained and had a great season that year, with a personal best at Cherohala.

Similarly, 2009 was a disaster for me, fitness-wise, with the coupe de grace coming in late December when Jon was in town and we went for this ride together. Jon kicked my trash all over the road, and the Beast even felt the need to pace me on some of the steep rollers to keep me from falling too far behind. I don't believe I've been as embarrased since the day Russ beat me up Dolly Ridge. I followed it up with an equally humiliating climb up to the Peavine Falls road the next day on mountain bikes (again, Jon and the Beast enjoying lots of time to chat while waiting for me to join them atop the climb).

So, like the previous episode, I'm once again motivated. Motivated to ride strongly, to avoid the shame of barely being able to finish a 35 miler. To that end, I took a longer route into work this morning, a route with more climbing and miles. I've eaten my year's helping of humiliation and I'm hoping it'll keep me fueled up for a long time.

Is it Spring yet??!!

2010-01-19T08:53:00.002-06:00

Sure feels like it is...

Yesterday was a beautiful 60 degree day here in the land of BCS Euphoria. I had determined that I wouldn't let a day away from work go wasted and managed to slip in a 2 hour ride in the late afternoon.

As I climbed out of the hole in the mountain in which we live, I thought I might be feeling pretty good, a few minutes later as I summited at Col du Station de Essénce, I was convinced I was going to have to get some climbing in because who knew when my legs would feel this good again.

I met up with my youngest child, Molly, at the Lakeshore trail and we rode to the other end together. It's only 2.5 miles each way, but it's been a long time since she rode and her legs were sore (she claimed). When it was over, she wanted to do it again, but I knew it wouldn't be as nice as the first time, since the legs were sore. We'll do longer next Saturday. But she had fun, and that's what's important, right?

Leaving her to catch a ride back home with her mom (oh settle down, Cathy was waiting at the end with the car to take her), I headed out on a short tour of Mountain Brook. I managed several shortish steep climbs with some effort, and noticed on Dell (a nice steepish climb to the top of Shades Mountain) that I wasn't feeling quite as good as I had previously thought I was...but the weather was so nice that I didn't care. After descending Cherokee, and then descending Smyer, I got my first look at the gate that was erected to keep cyclists from using a certain parking lot to get to the bottom of Smyer. It's sad to see that despite many level heads trying to work out a way to keep out access open, a few pinheads managed to screw it up for everybody. And I do mean pinheads on both sides of this issue, pinhead riders who refused to accept the property owner's requests to stay away until the issue was resolved, and the pinheads who work in the office building who were threatened by spandex clad hordes traversing their parking area.

Anyway, climbing Smyer was actually not too bad. I pushed it hard at times and got the speed ramped up, but couldn't sustain the effort for more than a few seconds at a time. But all in all, I think the fitness will be coming back this season. I was looking at my riding logs (which I have going back nearly 10 years) and noticed that my previously worst season (before this one) was followed up by one of my strongest seasons ever. Of course, that was before baseball and football became part of our lives, but I'll just have to find a way to work around those things.

The only downside to yesterday's ride is that it left me without the legs to ride to work this morning (as I had planned). They're sore, but it's a good sore.

One Commute, hold the ice

2010-01-11T09:44:00.002-06:00

It was cold this morning. 15 degrees as I wheeled out of the driveway, bundled up and feeling like the Michelin man.

I still froze the whole way to the office...especially on the downhills. But at least the lack of moisture for the past few days meant I didn't have any ice on the roads to deal with (unlike last week, when it was all over the place)...so I had that going for me.

Still nice to be out burning calories and putting in a few miles anyway. At least it was sunny.

Over the river and through the woods...

2009-12-30T20:41:00.004-06:00

The day before Christmas Eve I returned to the MTB with a ride out at OMSP. It wasn't as nice as the day before, weather-wise, but it wasn't bad. Just overcast.

Jon joined the Beast and I once again, and we left the South trailhead, riding the trail clockwise. I love the first section of this trail, lots of twists and turns with short climbs and descents...it's a nice fast section of singletrack.

As the day before, I struggled to keep up with the clearly stronger riders (Jon and Jeff) on the climbs, especially the climb up to Peavine Falls road from the North Trailhead, but I learned long ago that when I'm riding with the Beast, I simply let him ride off the front if that's what he wants to do...if I try to match him, I'm going to kill myself sooner. So I let him go, set my own rythm and work my way along, getting a good workout that leaves me enough to survive later.

Jon impressed me by cleaning through Blood Rock, though never having seen it before. I opted to walk through rather than risk a fall, since I was effectively riding with one hand. On the plus side, I killed the downhill section before and after Blood Rock and really had a great time.

Halfway through the final section, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, there were signs pointing to a new trail, and it appeared (to me) that the old MTWR was closed for some reason. Turns out it wasn't closed, but I was going too fast to read the sign, so I made the turn onto the new trail. Soon we found ourselves in a mud bog that was both long and deep. Then a creek without a bridge. It appears we had found the new trail that is being cut around the northwest side of the lake that will eventually cross the dam and link with the South Trailhead. It wasn't too long, and we ended up back at the parking area after fooling around in the weeds for a while.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that there have been changing stalls, and a bike wash station built near the parking area. We really liked having the chance to wash the mud off the bikes before heading home. A very nice touch.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing the loop out there. I've got to get on the MTB more often. Last year I had ridden at Oak Mountain most Saturdays since early September, but this was my first time out this year. It's a good workout, and I need more of that.

And it was a pleasure to have Jon along, as he experienced southern mountain biking for the first time. I think he had as much fun as we did. I hope we get the chance to do this ride again when I'm more fit to keep up.

Holiday Road

2009-12-29T13:57:00.002-06:00

Wasn't that the name of the song in "Christmas Vacation"? Anyway, it was 3 days before Christmas, and Jon was in town from Utah. The morning broke on a beautiful sunny day. The weather channel app on my iPhone said it would be 61 before the day was over, so I happily tossed my tights back into the drawer and finished putting things together for the ride.

On my way out the door, downstairs heading into the garage, I smelled a funny odor...I asked by two oldest boys to make sure they cleaned their bathroom. But then decided to go see why it smelled so badly. The floor, and the tub were filled with backed up...you know what. After putting the two teenagers in charge of clean-up and taking on "get a plumber here pronto" duties for myself, I finally headed out to pick up Jon about 30 minutes late. I wasn't too worried about it, I knew we had plenty of daylight to ride with, and a little later start meant warmer temps as well.

We finally hooked up with Doug and the Beast at our predetermined meeting spot, out at 280 and 119. Got Jon's loaner adjusted to fit, and headed out.

Because the Beast was in town, and we were only a short ride from his favorite hill, I was resigned to the fact that we would indeed be climbing Hugh Daniel drive, from the Greystone side. Words cannot express how much I loathe that hill. The pitch constantly changes, and the easiest parts are 8-9%. I just can't ever get a good rythym going on it. After that climb and down the other side, we headed southwest and down through the Narrows, which is a particularly scenic road that has no traffic and a nice little river running along next to it. Heading down 43 toward Vandiver, I found that I was having a really tough time keeping up. Months of no riding were paying off for me in exactly the way I expected. My superior Mass/Strength ratio helped me close the gap on the downhills of the rollers, only to lose it again when the road turned up.

Finally pulling into the BP station at Vandiver, I pulled out my phone and started checking to see what was happening with the plumbing disaster. I also grabbed a plastic bag, put ice in it, and iced down my nagging elbow for 15 minutes while Jon, Doug, and the Beast all did a little loop that added some mileage to their ride. I met them at the top of Coosa Mountain, where they had already descended and climbed back up the north side from Dunavant.

We headed down and I think Jon was a bit surprised with the short but steep climb after the descent back up to the "town" of Dunavant. We turned west again and after riding 41 past Shoal Creek, headed back up Hugh Daniel (the side we had descended earlier), then down the other side and back to the cars.

A good ride, that motivated me tremendously to do something about getting back in shape. Jon was strong and didn't appear to have much trouble keeping up, so I'm told he had a good time and learned a little bit about what it's like to ride in the south.

All in all, you couldn't have asked for better weather, or friends to ride with.

Holiday Riding

2009-12-27T19:26:00.002-06:00

Okay. I'm fed up. I've finally decided to ignore whatever shape my body is in and work at doing something to improve my fitness regardless of the lack of complete functionality. To that end, this past week, I started riding my bike again, and keeping track of what I eat to better keep control of my caloric intake every day.

So far, even with holiday eating, I'm down 3500 calories from my budget this week. My goal is to lose 20 pound over the next 20 weeks. This seems reasonable...no? I'm using "Lose-It" for my iPhone...the app I used last year to lose some extra weight before our cruise so I could eat away without worry while on vacation. It worked for me then, so it should work for me now.

How am I down 3500 calories? Riding. After riding to and from work on Monday, on Tuesday I did a 35 mile road ride with the Beast, Doug, and Jon. We had a great day with spectacular weather (low 60's, sunny, light breeze), and some strong climbs, and lots of rollers. Yeah, I spent most of the day off the back, but it still felt good to be riding again. Wednesday we rode the loop out at Oak Mountain State Park...a tough mountain bike ride, technical with a long steep climb, and fun fun fun descents on twisty single-track.

I took the rest of the week away from excercise, but I'm back to it tomorrow with a lunchtime swim.

On the Road Again...

2009-12-21T15:23:00.003-06:00

I haven't been on the bike since October 3. It's not been any fun. I find I sometimes need external motivation, and three things have conspired this week to provide that for me.

1) Jon, of Lactic Acid Threshold, is in town for a wedding, and we're going to get a couple of rides in while he's here. I've never ridden with Jon, and while on any normal day, he would kick me all over the road, I'm hoping to use the home court advantage to keep the humiliation to a tolerable degree. We'll ride MTB at Oak Mountain, and a do a road ride, both with the Beast.

2) I stepped on the scale two days ago and discovered that I was cursed with an additional 12 pounds, aquired since returning from a cruise back in March. It's got to come off. No wonder I feel so tired lately.

3) That bright round disc in the sky has returned, and I'd better take advantage of it while it's here. Who knows when we'll start getting rained upon again, and how many weeks it will last before seeing sunshine again.

So, with that in mind, I put on every layer of cold weather gear I owned this morning for my "in the 20s" commute/first ride in nearly 3 months. Turns out I didn't need all that layering as the aforementioned 12 pounds insulated me sufficiently.

In short, the ride hurt. From the first mile of 8% climbing to get away from my house, to the little rollers along 10th South, it was as if I had never ridden before.

I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to the ride home tonight.

My Favorite Weather

2009-10-04T16:41:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, cool and sunny with a cloudless sky. A perfect day for a nice easy 35 with Jake. It feels good to be back out riding again, after an endless summer of injury.

Where did the summer go?

2009-08-29T09:00:00.002-05:00

It's been a loooong time since I've been on my bike. May's 3 State 3 Mountain put me off the bike for 3 weeks. Just as I as ready to start riding again, the weather went bad, and I had a crash on my scooter that seperated my left shoulder, bruised ribs, hip and knee. That meant no riding for 6 weeks (according to my doctor, I was planning on 4). The next set-back came early in July while I was at the lake with family for a week. I decided I'd go ahead and waterski. Overcompensating for the shoulder, I managed to tear muscle away from my ribs, which has only this past week stopped hurting enough to let me sleep on that side.

So. Summer is gone. And it's been several months since I spent any time at all on my bike. Sure, I've put in 5 miles here and there (about 3 times over the past month), but nothing to write about.

So I went this morning with some friends. They took it easy on me. We did 33 miles. At times it was faster than I would have liked, but that's just the way it goes. I suffered on the climbs (my shoulder hurt a bit when I would pull on the bars just the right way), and my legs were quite sore when I climbed the stairs after getting home. It's been a long time since I felt that burn.

I like it.

Wet

2009-05-07T08:44:00.002-05:00

Saturday was the 3 State 3 Mountain ride in Chattanooga. The weather forecast when I left Friday afternoon was for a typical summer type day, with 50% chance of rain in the late afternoon. Since I planned to be finished and long gone on my way home before late afternoon, I figured it was going to be a nice day.

Following baseball practice (my Dodgers are 8-3-1, and have won 5 in a row by the way), I got off to a late start when I couldn't find the wrench I need to attach my rack to the van's hitch mount. Cathy found it for me, and I left to pick up Jake. Discovering along the way that I forgot the GPS mount. So Jake and I headed back to my place to retrieve it. In other words, an already late start got later by the minute.

Finally out of Birmingham, and on our way, The Beast called wondering where we were. We were about an hour short of Chattanooga, just outside of Gadsden. 5 minutes later, it started raining. Then it began to rain harder. I had the wipers on as fast as possible and couldn't see a thing. I started checking the weather radar on my iPhone (love that feature) and discovered huge bands of orange and red and yellow stretching all the way to Arkansas. Sigh. Maybe a miracle would happen.

The next morning, it was barely raining at all. Encouraged, we headed off with 2500 other riders through downtown Chattanooga. We were near the front, feeling good, even though it was beginning to rain a bit harder. Then The Beast had a flat. We'd gone maybe 3 blocks. We pulled over and changed that flat in less than 3 minutes. Hundreds of riders had passed us, but we were still well within the group. We jumped out and started off again. Less than 2 blocks later, The Beast was stricken with another flat. Again, a very fast change and back into the group, but near the back this time. Heading past AT&T field (where the Lookouts play), Jake had a puncture. His tire was a little harder to change, but eventually it was repaired and while inflating it, the tube blew. So we pulled the whole thing apart again, and installed our last tube. So, if you're keeping score at this point, it's now raining pretty hard, we've gone less than 1.5 miles, and had 4 flat tires in our group of 4 riders. There was talk of packing it in right there, but...

Finally on the bikes again, a few blocks later, we passed a bike shop, which opened for us to replenish our tube and CO2 cartridge supply. Jake and I also got cheap rain jackets...the clear rubber/plastic kind that we discovered kept the rain out, but the sweat in. I know.

We made it to the outskirts of Chattanooga, without another rider anywhere in sight. All 2496 riders (besides ourselves) were up the road. We were dead last. A motorcycle support guy pulled up alongside us and warned us about some railroad tracks up ahead. He said they'd had several crashes there and suggested we walk across. When we came to them, I pulled my right leg over to the left side of my bike and coasted across them, ready for the bike to slip. Jake on the other hand, chose not to dismount, and sure enough, he went down. I looked back to see him picking himself up and trying to get going again.

As the first climb began at mile 10 (Suck Creek Mountain), the rain was falling pretty hard, but things seemed to be looking up as far as making some headway on putting some miles behind us. This climb lasts 5 miles, and 3 miles into it, the bottom fell out and it couldn't have rained any harder. There was lightning and thunder, and I'll admit that being on a bicycle near the top of a mountain in such conditions was not exactly comfortable. I'm no coward, but I have a healthy respect for things that can kill me...like lightning.

All along the climb, we had been passing riders. We probably passed 2 or 3 hundred on our way up. Now we started seeing large numbers of riders coming back down the mountain heading back in (abandoning). I have to admit, a dry, warm car was an enticing thought at that point, but we kept on going.

Skipping way ahead, to mile 45...my knee had been bothering me for about 10 miles. By this point it was almost unbearable. In the cold and wet, it had never warmed up properly (and I'm too stupid to bother to stretch properly before I ride). We had a discussion as a group and decided that I'd head off and do the 100K route (63 miles) while they finished the full 100 miles. So we split up at that point. About a mile into the shorter route, I decided to abandon that plan and go back and finish the full 100 miles too. I rode back and rejoined the 100 mile route.

About a mile into that, my chain broke. I took that as a sign I was making the wrong choice. I started walking back hoping a support vehicle would be along soon, when another rider offered to help my fix my chain. We got it together and I managed to make it back to the finish without it breaking again.

It isn't the way I'd hoped to do the ride this year, but sometimes things happen in a way you don't expect. On the plus side, there were Physical Therapists at the finish who finally pointed me in the direction of what is causing my knee problems. Hopefully, if I break my bad habit of not stretching and start building better flexibility (particularly my IT Band, which is causing my knee pain), I should have it beat.

I'm hoping to enjoy the full ride next year.

Yeah, it's been a while...

2009-03-23T09:27:00.002-05:00

But I have been riding...some. I've been mostly doing the commute to work and back, interrupted by frequent days on end of rain and storms. Then a cruise to the Bahamas took me off the bike for 10 days, and added some of the weight I'd been working so hard to lose (admittedly, so that I could enjoy the cruise without so much worry).

But back in Birmingham and back on the bike now for a few rides. I did 4 days of the work commute last week (Tue, Wed, Thur, and Fri). I had some vague plan to work a ride in around B's baseball practice on Saturday, but nothing concrete until Jake called me and set up a ride for early Saturday morning.

I arrived at the appointed start as the sun was coming up, and was completely unprepared for the cold morning. After JB showed up and I repaired a flat on his rear tire, we took off, and the cold became freezing. At least until the sun started shining over the ridge we were riding next to.

I was a bit curious how this ride would go. Usually Jake and JB, who are runners, very fit, and 10 years younger than me are off the front on these rides, especially the climbs. But when the road turned uphill on 25 toward Sterrett, I found myself riding away from them on the front. When we got to the final climb, up Hugh Daniels Drive, once again, riding away on the front (and the hill didn't seem quite as steep (it's 16% at the top) as it did the last time I rode it with them).

All in all, it was a good week, and I'm encouraged with where I am fitness-wise with 6 weeks to go before 3 State 3 Mountain.

Starting off right

2009-01-02T11:03:00.003-06:00

I slept late yesterday...up late New Year's Eve and into the morning, so it was around noon when I finally started putting my stuff together for an afternoon ride at Oak Mountain. Unfortunately, most of my important stuff was awol. So I ended up leaving without it.

JB and I met up and started a nice comfortable pace. It didn't take long before we stopped and I pulled my tights and stuffed them in my pocket. Now wearing a short sleeve jersey and shorts, I was still very comfortable. It wasn't hot by any stretch, but it was warm enough that summer wear was working. As I said to JB along the way, let's see you do this on January 1 in Minnesota (from where he moved last summer).

JB's headset loosened up a bit so we stopped to tighten it (one of my "essentials" that I did manage to find was my multi-tool). 30 seconds after stopping for that, he called out that he had a flat. One of my "essentials" that I was unable to find was my pocket pump. Since he didn't have one either (the day just gets better) we were out of luck, although I did have a spare tube. Another rider came along and he let us borrow his to air up the repaired tire and we were off again.

Climbing the jeep road up from the North Trailhead, I noticed that it seemed as though they had taken a bulldozer to the trail and scraped up all the rocks that used to bedevil me on this climb. It was nice and smooth, at least up to the bridge, which made the climbing much easier. I decided to walk through Blood Rock after cracking my elbow trying to ride through it last month. No sense starting out 2009 with a bruise, right?

JB crashed hard on a stair step set of rocks on Johnson's Mountain. He planted his front wheel, it stopped, he kept going, landing square on his forehead, opening a small gash, and taking a large chunk out of the front of his new helmet.

My legs had that first twinge of cramping as I climbed the last hill up the girlfriend trail that leads to Mr. Toad's section. But we had ridden pretty steadily (effort-wise) and I wasn't surprised to have them notice the effort and protest a bit.

It was a beautiful afternoon for riding, and we had a great time. Best of all, I feel like I started off the season right, with a good 2 hour effort. It's raining today, but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny again. I think I'll take the Tarmac out on the road in the morning for a couple of hours.

My resolution for 2009, ride like I'm 35 again.

Lean and Mean

2008-12-02T09:05:00.003-06:00

Yeah, I wish.

No it's not a description of me, it's the Spinerval workout I did on the rollers last night while C was at BCC rehearsal.

A few years ago, 7 of our family all did a triathlon together. Part of the swag was a DVD of a workout program called Spinervals. Everyone gave theirs to me. So last night I was looking through the DVD case thinking that I'd stick to the easier, but longer, workouts. Then I saw the workout called Lean and Mean and thought, hmm, I've never done this one. I don't even know what it covers. So I decided to give it a try.

It was a thigh burner. I'll definitely be doing it again. I'm thinking it'll be my regular Monday night workout.

In other news, I've done a couple of rides recently, nothing major, but one two weeks ago out at was epic only due to the extreme cold. JB, The Beast, Doug, and I did the OMSP loop. It was around 20 degrees when we began and didn't warm up much by the time we finished the loop. JB left when we reached the North Trailhead (he had to work, apparently there's a great demand for Botox treatments on Saturdays). The rest of us continued on up the climb to Peavine Ridge where the wind tried to blow us off the side, and ensured that despite the sunshine, we wouldn't notice any additional warmth. I cracked my elbow hard against a ledge at Blood Rock, which summarily ended my attempt to make it through without putting a boot on the ground. It was a good ride, and I noted that my climbing, while not "fast", was steady enough to maintain gaps without letting them get out of hand.

On Thanksgiving morning, Jake and JB and I did the TNPT route. It wasn't too cold, but the low 30's means bundling up enough to take a bit of speed off. What normally takes 1:45 took us 2 hours. Add in the climb up Smyer and across Shades Crest and when I got home it was a solid 2:30 workout.

The best news of all, for me, is that since the Monday prior to Thanksgiving, I've lost 3 pounds. 11 more to go to race weight!

Early Morning Cold

2008-11-11T18:52:00.004-06:00

The best way to combat a cold Saturday morning is to meet some friends for hill repeats on Smyer. I decided to do alternating intervals high cadence, low gear and big gear, low cadence. 2 minutes for each. Jake and John and I did 5 repeats each (2 miles each climb). By the time the local club boys (and girl) came along at the end of our last repeat, my legs were shot. But I hooked up with Dirt Dog and the rest for the ride back home, since they were headed the same way. It was a good Saturday morning...but I'm still struggling to find a regular routine of training that doesn't get clobbered by an increasingly busy non-cycling schedule.

A Little Better Day

2008-10-11T11:25:00.004-05:00

This morning I met JB at Oak Mountain and we did a modified version of the trail, starting with Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, the Johnson's Mountain. Then up the Peavine Falls road to the fire road which leads to the top of the BUMP trail (where Blood Rock is located), down the BUMP trail, back onto the road and finishing up with Mr. Toad's back to the parking lot.

It was a good morning to ride...the weather was overcast, but it wasn't threatening to rain, just cloudy. Temps were moderate, and there wasn't any wind at all. It was almost perfect.

It was a better ride for me today than last week. I felt a little strained on Peavine Falls Road. I still need to work on dialing in my position on the MTB, and better fitness will help as well. I've got to excercise more than once a week if I want to get any stronger.

On The Trail

2008-10-06T11:09:00.003-05:00

Saturday I went to Oak Mountain State Park to ride my mountain bike. It's been quite a while since I've done any off-road riding. It was also my first time on a bike since Hunstville two weeks earlier.

My friend John and I went together. We ran short on time and had to skip Johnson's Mountain, but otherwise, we had a good time. It was a tough ride, but if I can motivate myself better, I'll start riding faster.

But it was a beautiful fall day in Alabama and even if I'd crawled the trail, it would have been a pleasure to be outside on such a pretty day.

Huntsville 2008

2008-09-22T09:30:00.006-05:00

Saturday was the annual Huntsville Century. The Beast arrived Friday evening to spend the night, just as I was finishing up a tear down, thorough cleaning, and rebuild of my bike. He brought me a wheel to use after I pulled a spoke nipple through the rim of my rear. I mounted a tire and put the wheel on and enjoyed the nice shiny silver drivetrain parts. I love a clean bike!

The next morning I went outside at o'dark thirty to load up the bikes to find it had been raining. Not such a big deal...the forecast was for partly cloudy and 80 degrees. Just a storm that had been passing through. Jake showed up, and Doug just a few minutes later, while the Beast stumbled through his morning routine. All loaded up, we pulled out for the 2 hour drive north.

It started raining. Then it started raining harder. I pulled up the weather radar on my iPhone and there were big orange/red spots covering up Hunstville! This was really looking like a bad day. Eventually, it slacked off, and when we got to the start, it was just drizzling. Following a quick change of clothes, and a not so quick wait in line to use the facilities, we were off.

This year we started mid-pack. The pace settled out and we were having a good time sorting out our legs and chatting with Jake (who was on his first century). It was still drizzling lightly, and my cleaning efforts from the previous evening were entirely negated as my ride was soon covered with mud splatters thrown up by my own tires, as well as those of riders around me.

The Beast suddenly realized that the group had split and there was a faster group a quarter mile up the road. Clearly that wouldn't do, so we began moving up until we were clear of the group we were riding in, and we began to chase. We closed down the gap quickly enough, and were soon riding with the first group on the road. As we settled into the rythm, I felt compelled to mention to Beast that I didn't consider the post ride meal to be sufficiently high quality to inspire me to arrive at the finish with the first group, but that he was free to get there as quickly as he wanted.

As the miles went by, our group began to dwindle. At some point, Jake and Doug had fallen out of the group and as I looked back over the fields on a left turn, I could see no riders within a mile of us. The Beast and I discussed it and decided we'd wait at the second feed stop for them to show, but we (especially me) felt pretty good and wanted to get as many miles in at this racing pace as possible before backing off to finish the ride. I kept telling myself I should ease up, that I'd pay for my efforts later, but I just couldn't do it. The drive to be the first one to reach the Elora Pentacostal Church (where food and drink supplies awaited) was just too strong. I wasn't first, but I was with them when we got there.

The Beast and I began riding back toward the start after 15 mintues had passed with no sign of Jake or Doug. We soon found them making their way toward us. Reloaded, and relieved, we headed out for the Lexie Crossroads Steak and Seafood house, where the third food stop was located. I was feeling the effects of covering the first 35 miles at an average 22mph for the most of this leg. My glycogen levels were depleted, and so I had to focus on taking in more energy sources than I was using, to get myself back to better levels. Lots of longish rollers and permanent rest stops (cemetaries) populate this part of rural southern Tennessee. It's scenic and, oh by the way, the rain had stopped about 15 miles into the ride, we were dried off and the weather, while cloudy, was very nice.

At Lexie Crossroads, we found the grill going, complete with the bacon wrapped filet, but in a new wrinkle this year, also bacon wrapped scallops. The beef was wonderful, and while I normally love scallops, the combination of hard aerobic excercise and seafood odor just don't quite mix. 18 miles later, through the northern-most loop in the Valley That Time Forgot we arrived back at Lexie Crossroads for yet another surf-n-turf snack before tackling the last 40 miles. One long climb awaits just a 1/2 mile from the stop, and then it's (theoretically) smooth sailing from there.

With 30 miles to go, my left knee started to bother me. I should mention that I'd fallen and hit it into the elevator door at my office on Friday, twisting it and making little pop sound. But after a few steps, it seemed okay so I didn't give it another thought. Until now. Every mile that went by it hurt worse. It finally got to the point that on any little rise I would be ejected out the back of the group like a paper bag out a car window. The Beast would roll back and help me get up some of the long rollers, while I was okay for a pedal stroke or six on the shorter ones and could handle those okay, for a while.

With 10 miles to go, every pedal stroke my knee felt like it was going to explode. Again, The Beast was an invaluable ally at this stage, making sure that I didn't fall too far behind, moderating the pace when I asked and generally keeping a positive attitude.

In the end, I finished. 107 miles in 5:46. It kind of makes me wonder what kind of time I lost from my knee bothering me. We finished this ride fast, but not as fast as we could have, so I'll avoid elevators next year and we'll see what we can do.

My ride with a TDF Champ

2008-09-15T13:06:00.007-05:00

Just because a couple of lawyers lack the mental capacity to understand the science doesn't mean that Floyd Landis is a doper. On the other hand, just because one lawyer does undertand the basic freshman physics behind the assertion that the test result was flawed, doesn't mean he isn't a doper. The point of this, is that ASO and the UCI/WADA/USADA not-withstanding, Floyd Landis is a Tour De France Champion, who won (in 2006) after unleashing one of the most incredible breakaways in Tour history to gain back most of an 8 minute deficit. What Floyd did that day (Stage 17) is bigger than 59-0.

Saturday morning, Floyd Landis joined the weekend version of the Tuesday Night Pain Train. I had the chance to ride alongside Floyd for quite a bit of the ride, we chatted and I listened as he talked with other people in the group. At one point, a rider came the other way and hollered, "is this the Landis group?" Floyd who was right next to me suppressed the urge to respond, "I think so".

We took it easy (the way we used to) out through the neighborhoods of Mountain Brook and Irondale. Floyd rode near the back of the group, and camly drank his Starbucks at 18 mph, while carrying on multiple conversations.

By the time we hit Ruffner Road, the coffee was gone, and the caffiene had begun to kick in as Floyd moved to the yellow line and went to the front. I stayed glued to his wheel as the pace continued to increase. Coming over a small (to me, most likely un-noticed by Floyd) rise in the road, I shot over to the left and went as hard as I could. Going down the other side, I looked back to see a small group of 6 riders chasing me hard, Floyd camly sitting in with them. Further back, I could see the effects of the stick of dynamite I had just tossed into the group, as they began to break up, some chasing the chasers, others deciding they were done, or couldn't follow.

I was caught and the sat in on Floyd's wheel again until the last hill on Ruffner, where once over the top, Floyd came past me like a G5 passing a private single-engine, and eventually I lost sight of him for good.

I rode along by myself for a few minutes as some of the other riders began to catch me while I recovered from an effort I hadn't put in for a looong time.

My biggest impression of Floyd is that he is a geniunely nice guy. I spent nearly 30 minutes with him talking and listening to him talk. He was kind and gracious to everyone who approached him. He offered compliments and positive comments to everyone. I contrast this with talk that I've heard about some of the other successful riders and "world-class" athletes, and some that I've experienced first-hand. I put Floyd even ahead of Mario Cippollini (with whom I've also ridden), who probably only suffered from a language barrier that made him seem a little pre-occupied.

Anyway, to sum up...I rode with Floyd, Floyd is a nice guy, Floyd is very fast. I hung with him as long as I could. It wasn't enough, I wish I could have hung longer, but it was fun anyway.

Sometimes you're the nail...

2008-03-19T12:16:00.000-05:00

Only one word can describe tonight's pain train.

Ouch!

I missed last weeks first pullout (coaching the Dodgers that night), but I thought it would be much the same as last years weekly sell-your-first-born, kill-your-own-grandmother-to-get-ahead ride. I was wrong.

Within the first mlle it became clear that this year's pace is designed not just to drop those who can't keep up, but to kill them first, then spit them from the rear.

Last year it was always my goal (while riding with the A group) to stay with them through the neighborhoods and to the end of Ruffner Road.

This year it looks like the goal is going to be to arrive at the neighborhoods with the group. Never mind staying with them the whole way through.

Why was it so fast? I really have no idea. I'll say this though, it isn't very often that you look over next to you and see a rainbow jersey (a world champion) riding next to you. I guess this makes two WC's I've ridden with (Mario Cippollini at the Tour De Georgia in 04).

Tonight I was the nail. Give me a few weeks. I'll start swinging the hammer.

Out of shape, out of (my) mind...

2007-11-29T14:46:00.000-06:00

Saturday the Beast drove over from Georgia and we met up at Oak Mountain State Park for some fun on the red trail. I was worn out from Friday's 9 hour shift on the Scout Christmas Tree lot, where I had shoved my hip out of joint hauling a tree, (leaving me unable to walk for about an hour).

Jeff and I hooked up at the south trailhead parking lot and began our ride clockwise, with 7 Bridges as our first section. The air was cold. And by cold I mean that I didn't bother to shed my arm warmers or tights for the whole ride. Unusual because you warm up really fast mountain biking without the wind to keep you cooled off. But there was very little "warming up" to be done.

We had a pleasant ride through 7 Bridges, and The Chimneys over to the North Trailhead, where Doug was waiting for us.

The 2.5 mile climb up to the ridge on the fire road hurt. I gave serious thought to the possibility that I might actually be certifiable for riding with these two while I was in such lousy shape. My HR was constantly over 180 for the entire climb. Pain. Lots of pain. Lots and lots of pain. (to be followed by the way, by another 9 hour shift on the tree lot).

Jeff and Doug would pull ahead on the steep sections, then I would close the gap down on the easier parts, then ahead again, and pull it back again, all the way to the BUMP Trail, where the fun really begins. Miles of downhill singletrack, twisting and winding through the trees as it traverses down the mountain side again.

It's been about 2 years since I've ridden at OMSP, and I could tell that I needed more experience to relearn the twists and turns, and most importantly, the proper line past Blood Rock. Past that, Johnson's Mountain and Mister Toad's Wild Ride are always a ton of fun, and I didn't have much trouble keeping up with my two ride partners, except on the uphills.

The one thing that is clear is that I'm going to need to ride more than once per week if I expect to even maintain any conditioning.

The Silver Shoe Dilemma

2007-10-06T11:18:00.002-05:00

Cycling culture is a vicious circle of do’s and better-not-if-you-don’t-want-to-get-laughed-at’s. For example, the question of what kind of tires should you ride is always plagued by that nagging voice in the back of your head...”if you show up with your otherwise expensive equipment shod in cheap wire-bead tires, you’ll be the laughingstock of the pack tonight. On the other hand, if you show up with expensive kevlar belted, ultra-light folding bead tires, you run the risk of being derided as a “poseur”. (Note, nobody really knows what kind of tires you're riding, the bead is hidden within the rim and only an expert, which every cyclist fancies himself to be, could know the difference. Especially on the move).

Another example: Do I carry one water bottle, two water bottles, or no water bottles on the ride tonight? If I carry two, I should have plenty of water, but risk being called a fred who doesn’t care about the all important extra grams I’m hauling around. If I carry none, I look cool until I get dropped. Then I’m just the foolish fred who forgot or ingored the importance of hydration.

The antidote to this dilemma, of course, is speed. If you have it, nothing else matters. If you don’t, nothing else matters. Another example. I have friend with whom I occasionally ride. Doug doesn’t really care what anybody thinks and has no problem hauling around every tool known to mankind in his oversized fanny pack, and does so on cheap wire bead tires of dubious lineage. Doug realizes that if you’re keeping up with him, you’re going to be wheezing too hard to make any comments about his cycling accoutraments. And if you can’t keep up with him, when you do see him again, you’ll look pretty silly criticizing his style, since he’s still clearly faster than you. Again, speed trumps everything.

I could go on and on with example of how speed can make up for a multitude of style and/or equipment faux pas, but then I’d never get to the point of this post...so...

A few years ago, I went shopping for new cycling shoes. I had worn out my old (circa 1987) colorful Look shoes (how I loved those genuine leather baby’s!). I had my heart set on a pair of Sidi Genius shoes. While the leather is faux, they still feel like slippers on a foot and I knew after trying on many pairs that this was the shoe I had to have.

There was just one problem. The only pair in town in my size was silver. Buying silver shoes is perfectly okay. It’s the actual wearing of them where you get into trouble. You see, in cycling culture, if you wear shoes of a color other than black, you’d better be able to back it up. Wearing silver shoes screams “hey everybody, look at me, I’m fast!!!”

I begged the shop owner to order a pair of black ones for me. Can’t do it he said, next season’s shoes are all I can get and the price has jumped considerably because they’re an “improved” model. “But it’s okay” he said, “I’ve seen you on the Pain Train. You can wear silver shoes.”

So I went ahead and bought them. And nobody gave me a second glance until I started to neglect my training this year. Now every time I get dropped, I wish I’d spray painted my shoes black before the ride.

So I’ve thought about this all season long and I’ve come up with some options.

I could buy black shoes, but I can’t afford the current model of the shoes I have now, so I’d have to downgrade to do that. And my wife would kill me if I bought new cycling shoes while she is searching through the closet for shoes of just the right shade of blue to wear to church on Sunday.

So that option won’t fly.

So now we’re back to the only real solution. Speed. Remember, it trumps everything. I need to get fast again. Meanwhile I’ll print up a sign that I can pin to my back before every ride that says:

I am not a poseur. I was fast when I bought these silver shoes. I know I’m still wearing them and I’m not fast now, but I hope to be fast again some day. To that end I’m investing money in a training program instead of black shoes. Please be patient with me and don’t laugh. By the way, can I borrow a water bottle?

Humberto is a blowhard

2007-09-18T10:19:00.000-05:00

Friday, September 14
Last night as I was trying to adjust Kenny's bike, I discovered that the lower bearing race on the steering tube had not been installed properly, and so I couldn't tighten the headset up properly. So I took the whole thing apart and hauled the offending fork/steerer tube down to the shop to be repaired. I had just finished putting his bike back together when The Beast arrived from Atlanta to pick me up for our trip to Huntsville for the Century tomorrow. Who would have thought that you could fit two bicycles, and two passengers with attendant bedding and clothes and all the gear you have to haul for a bike ride into a Volvo S40? We even had room left over.

We stopped at Surin West for a dinner of Sushi and assorted high carb Thai dishes, and then hit the road. We were on our own because Kenny and his friend Chris were staying behind in Birmingham to go to their respective school's football games (it was the big Spain Park vs Hoover HS (of Two-A-Days fame). Chris' dad would drive them up the next morning, leaving Bham at 4 am to get them to the start in time.

We stopped at Calogipi's brother's house for the night, where we were too late to see the kids. I was told that my niece had cried because she had to go to bed before she got to see me. The boys apparently, couldn't care less. They're boys after all.

September 15, 2007 4:30 am
It's one of those mornings where you keep having that dream that you're waking up, getting dressed and about to eat breakfast, when suddenly you realize that you're dreaming and go back to dream about something else, only to have a repeat of this previous dream (more realistic this time) a few moments later. This process is repeated until you actually physically move from the bed.

I hate mornings like that.

5:30 am
I decide that it's time to finally wake up and get moving, though my alarm isn't set to sound for another 15 minutes. I grabbed my new iPhone and text-messaged my son (K) to find out where they were. When it took him 40 minutes to respond I became worried that he might have missed his alarm and be snuggled all warm and cozy in his bedroom back in Birmingham.

We arrived at Madison County High School where the ride start and finish was located. Kenny and Chris got their things put together and took off an hour ahead of the scheduled start. Neither of them had ridden 100 miles before, so they wanted to give themselves plenty of time.

8:00 am
As the ride start was just minutes away, we rode up to the front of the group and when things got underway, The Beast and I were at the front. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph dead into our faces and so I decided that I'd just go ahead and let each of the others take their pulls now. After all, we have 50 miles of Tropical Storm Humberto's headwind ahead of us. There'd be plenty of time to pull later. It was cold, but sunny and except for the wind, you couldn't have picked a better day for this ride. The forecast high was 79 degrees. But as I found out later, you can still get a nasty sunburn, even when it's cool.

For the most part, people were content to let things go easy for a mile or two, but gradually the pace started increasing until a large group (perhaps 100 strong) were rolling along at 24-25 mph. Having not ridden much at all since Cherohala, and certainly very little speedwork, this effort was taking a lot out of me. At 13 miles into the ride, I felt the first twinges of a cramp in my left calf. Purely an "effort cramp" as the weather was still very cool. We made a turn to the west which brought us broadside to the wind and we broke into echelons across the road while the pace ramped up to 29-30 across some sizable rollers. After 3 miles of this crosswind leg, we turned back into the wind and immediately started another sizable roller. Being nowhere near the front, I saw The Beast make the turn in the first 5 riders and kick the pace up another notch. As he tells it, a second after that, a professional triathlete on a Scott Plasma when to the front and dialed it up to 33...climbing the hill. I don't dispute that account, because when I finally got to the corner and made the turn, I had to sprint as hard as I could at 35-36 (because of the "accordian effect" of being at the back of a group) to catch the back of the riders ahead of me. But by the time I got back on, I couldn't say. I was deep, at 188 bpm of heart rate and I knew I was cooked, with 80 miles still to go.

So I settled in with the other dozen riders who had been dropped and we began working together to get through it with some help. The Beast eventually noticed that I wasn't there anymore and dropped back to find me. I was a couple of hundred yards back. So he hooked in with my group and promptly strung it out to the point that there was no chance to work together anymore.

So I made him pull. He did it willingly. He'd spent the past 4 years living in Plano, TX and Tulsa, OK. This wind was nothing to him, and it was beating me to death so I sat on his wheel and stayed there until the first big climb at mile 38 (following the downhill where my friend Katie crashed out last year).

When I arrived at the feed stop, Kenny and Chris where there, having just arrived 2 minutes ahead of me. After reloading fluids, we left together and descended into The Valley That Time Forgot, where you find the toughest climb on this ride, the road leading up to the ridge called Mars Hill. I remembered that it was steep, but it took The Beast, Kenny and Chris by surprise. Kenny flew, and I mean FLEW!, up that hill! We finished the loop through the valley which brought us back to the feed station we had just left. Kenny and Chris were behind us a few minutes so we decided to make it a relaxed stop and get some food. Now, as food goes, most commonly you'll find bananas, and grapes, fig newtons, raisins, and trail mix along with water and gatorade, at these stops. But this stop went even further. They had all of these, plus, watermelon, hot dogs, coolers full of Go-Gurts (surprisingly tasty during a ride), coolers of V-8, Mountain Dew, Sprite, Coke, and bottled water. And the best of all, a barbeque grill churning out bite sized pieces of bacon-wrapped filet mignon as fast as you could eat them! We ate our fill without gorging ourselves and a couple of minutes after the boys arrived and announced their intention to rest a while, we took off again.

A mile or two later my left knee started to pop as I came around on my pedalling stroke. As the miles went by it got worse. When we arrived at the rest stop at mile 75, I told The Beast that I was going to have to get some ibuprofen and ice it down for 15 minutes. After that was done, we left again, but it really didn't feel a whole lot better. I was reduced to shifting into my small ring on any medium or larger roller and spinning up without loading my leg. Thanks to liberal portioning of Endurolytes, the cramping problems I worried about early in the ride weren't bothering me though. So that was a positive note.

At mile 88, The Beast announced that he had a flat tire, so we stopped to fix that. When I could see that he was in good shape I started off again, knowing that he would catch me. He did and we began a two man time trial to the end. We were flying along pretty well and even though I could only spin up the final steep hill, we finished the ride together in 5:42:20 for 102 miles.

Last year, I did this same ride in 5:18, but I had put in many more miles last year than I did this year, so I'm proud of that 5:42. Kenny and Chris finished a while later, their time being 7 hours, 15 mintues. Pretty good for their first 100 miler. Fact is, I'm prouder of them for finishing than anything else. Kenny is light (hence his ability to fly up a hill), and the 50 miles into Humberto beat the living daylights out of him.

But they (and we) finished. And that's what it's all about.

Saturday

2007-09-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

The Beast will be picking me up tomorrow afternoon (driving from Kennesaw to Hoover) and we will head for Madison to spend the night at relatives before riding the Huntsville "All You Can Eat" Century on Saturday. I just checked the weather, a high of 79 and sunny. The air should be good and clean as well, after the collision of the remnants of the latest hurricane meet the storm front that moved in this afternoon, dumping tons of rain, which will continue until tomorrow evening.

Kenny and his friend Christopher will be doing the ride as well, so it should be a good report when it's all said and done.

Right now I have no delusions over my abilities. I was shelled from the front pack 20 miles into the BBC Century last weekend and didn't have the legs left to stay with anyone in the second group either. It was a disappointing day. Last year I finished the Huntsville event strongly...this year I just hope to finish.

A New Columnist in Bham

2007-09-13T21:35:00.001-05:00

Our local cage liner has a new columnist...those who've read my blog for a while will recognize the name of the author, Doug Daughetee as one of my friends and riding partners. Doug reminds me a bit of Patrick O'Grady. I'll look forward to reading his column every other week.

http://www.al.com/sports/birminghamnews/ddaughhetee.ssf?/base/sports/1189607406232690.xml&coll=2

Still Hot

2007-08-16T15:50:00.001-05:00

It's now the 10th consecutive day with temperatures over 100 degrees. They say it's going to be at least 12 before we can even think about things cooling down.

This is putting a real crimp in my training. It's just too hot to excercise safely. K's cross country team is cancelling practice everyday because of the heat.

I'm starting to wish it would start raining. At least then I could ride the rollers in the garage.

Holy Cow It's Hot!

2007-08-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

When my alarm sounded at 5:30 am today, the weatherman reported that it was currently 83 degrees.

Think about that a second, the sun hasn't risen yet and it's already 83 degrees!

When it hits 100 degrees today, it'll be the 8th consecutive day of 100 degree heat in Birmingham, tying a 27 year old record.

I must be insane because I'm planning to ride the Tuesday Night Pain Train this afternoon. Or at least a portion of it. I'll see how it goes and how I'm feeling. I'm still a little congested from this virus that's been dogging me.

Un Jour Sans

2007-08-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

last Tuesday...

legs, energy, snap...speed of any kind.

The only thing there was plenty of Tuesday was heat. It was like riding in a blast furnace. The heat index was in the 120's. I decided to ride anyway. I started out with a sore throat, and rode only because I needed to do something after taking a recovery period the week before. As it turns out, it really wouldn't have mattered because I was sick enough by Thursday to stay home from work, and Tuesday's miles were the only miles I got in this week.

I was dropped before we got out of the neighborhoods in Irondale.

Oh well. Everyone has a bad day. I'll blame mine on whatever virus was gearing up to knock me down for a couple days.

I'm looking forward to redeeming myself next Tuesday.

Huntsville's a month away and I have serious doubts about my ability to ride more than 70 miles right now.

Cherohala 07-Part IV

2007-06-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

After gobbling down several Advil for my back, I climbed back aboard the bike and pointed the front wheel upwards...next stop, 8 miles and 2500 vertical feet distant. For some reason, the first mile after this 4th feed area is always the toughest spot on this ride for me. I don't know exactly why this is, but I suspect that it has to do with putting enormous stress on my muscles, then stopping to let them cool again, then jumping right back into a 9% gradient with no warm-back-up. That's why this year I kept my stop as short as possible, just long enough to refill empty Heed, aquire said Advil, and shove a banana down my throat. It helped a little bit to ease the suffering, but it still hurt.

The real heartbreaker on this climb is that after all the climbing you've done so far, at mile 77 you begin descending. It's just 1/2 mile, but you lose a couple hundred feet of hard won elevation and you're forced to reclimb those meters of vertical. At mile 79 climb makes a sharp hairpin and begins climbing steeply for the last 3 miles of this section. From mile 77, the road after this hairpin is visible across the cove you are circling and it's so high above your current altitude that you can't help but despair knowing how steep the road has to be to reach that spot where it cuts through some rock and disappears. At this point I don't think I've ever wanted to climb off my bike and quit so badly. Even in 2005 when I had a seperated shoulder that prevented me from using the handlebars for any leverage, and I had to walk some of the steep parts, I didn't want to quit. 2007 took every bit of motivation I could muster to keep from stopping.

I made my way slowly up through the cut, where the road then shifts to the south side of this mountain range and began the final mile and a half of climbing that would leave me at the highest point of this ride, Santeetlah Gap at 5390 ft. I'll just mention here that the Cherohala Skyway is the road with the highest average elevation east of the Mississippi River.

I made it to the top, again refilled my water bottles, took a couple more Advil, and struck out for the finish, 30 miles and 4500 feet below me. But I was spent. My efforts in the first 40 miles had drained any reserve that I might have had and I could only descend at whatever speed gravity would allow. On the climbs sprinkled amongst this long descent, I had no choice but to use my bail-out gear and make it to the top as best I could. I simply had no legs left for climbing. I felt a little better though as I saw people climbing into the support vehicles at the foot of these short climbs. I've never seen people quitting on the descent of the Skyway before. That let me know that while I was suffering like I never had before, so was everyone else. Undoubtably the heat and humidity were playing a role in all of this.

At Indian Boundary Road, where the road flattens somewhat and becomes more rollers than anything else, I became like a horse who smells the barn and decided that I could take it easy and suffer, or I could suck it up and work hard and suffer. The latter would just last a shorter time, so I threw a couple of Endurolytes in my mouth and chewed them rather than swallowing, washing them down with a little Raspberry Hammer Gel, put my head down and started to suffer. The larger rollers that have always given me a little trouble in the past were barely noticeable and didn't really slow me down much. There is one particular little hill that marks the end of this section, a steep little roller that forces you to get out of the saddle and power climb it...but once past, you round a bend and descend down a steep little hill that begins following a little river the last 7 miles into Tellico Plains. When I see the river, I know that I've made it. The only thing remaining to conquer is the last 1/4 mile 10% climb back to the finish line at Tellico Plains High School. Crossing the finish line in 7:50:23, my day at the Cherohala Challenge was over.

For the first time in any time I've done this ride, I still had actively planned to skip it next year. Usually, even though I hurt, I am already making plans for how I'll improve the following year before I'm out of the showers at TPHS. This year though, until Wednesday I was planning to skip the 2008 edition. But as of today, if it doesn't conflict with a family reunion scheduled for next June, I'll be back again. Hopefully stronger and faster.

Did I mention The Beast got a new job selling EPO?

Cherohala 07 Pt. 3

2007-06-21T09:27:00.001-05:00

Leaving the 2nd feed area, we began the final descent out of Deal's Gap (Tail of The Dragon) and were delighted to discover that the previously rough chip and seal pavement had been replaced with a nice smooth ribbon of brand new asphalt. This is a 12% grade which winds it's way down the mountain for 3 miles, so combine this with a new smooth road and you have a recipe for fun! We flew down the mountain, past the Tree of Shame, Crossroads of Time, and Cheoha Dam, arriving at Fugitive Bridge and started the 10 mile gentle climb through Tapoco Canyon up to the 3rd feed area at the entrance to Joyce Kilmer National Forest.

Last year I was on my own in this canyon and found the headwinds combined with the gradient to be a difficult test. The headwinds were there again this year, but I had a small group which allowed us to move considerably faster than I had on my own previously. Sharing the work, we arrived at the feed area, reloaded, relieved, and returned to the road.

Upon entering Joyce Kilmer National Forest, the road becomes rough. It's a chip and seal surface, with trees growing close to the road. The roots of these trees have grown under the road in spots, causing the pavement to heave. It's bumpy and rough ride that can easily sap more energy than you planned to expend if you're not careful. Fortunately, the rough road doesn't last but a couple of miles (and a few short climbs) before you pass Santeetlah Lake and return to the smooth pavement as you begin the two and a half mile climb up to the Cherohala Skyway.

It's not a steep climb, but it's not easy either, rising at a steady 6-7%. But it begins at mile 70, following the Tail of the Dragon and Tapoco Canyon, so you've already gone quite a distance, with considerable effort spent in climbing so far...and the tough climbing hasn't even started yet.

Halfway up the climb I again realized I was riding too hard trying to match The Beast, so I eased off and let him go. He gradually pulled away from me and eventually I could see him make the right hand turn onto the Skyway before disappearing for good. My back began to ache badly (I knew I should have been doing sit ups this year, I'm too old for this kind of riding without extra core fitness). As I made the turn onto the Skyway I realized that it was time for an Endurolyte capsule, but couldn't dig them out of my pocket, so I stopped to get one out and reorganize my pockets, tossing some empty Hammer Gel packets into a trash can at the overlook area where I was stopped.

With my load lightened somewhat (what do empty Hammer Gel packets weight? A half a gram each? Less?) I struck out for the next water and food stop, 3 miles of steep climbing in the distance. The sky was partly cloudy, and we were above the humid layer of air that had dogged us for the first 45 miles. When the sun was shining, it was hot. I mean HOT! But then a cloud would cover it and the temperature would seem to drop 20 degrees. I prayed for big clouds.

My pace on this part of the climb was slow...almost 2 mph slower than last year, and the last mile leading to the Feed area at Chute Cove (9%) was agony. I found Doug and The Beast there, nearly ready to leave, but more importantly, I found Advil for my aching back.

Tomorrow, (or the day after) Part 4

Cherohala 07- Pt. 2 - Blood on the Shores of Lake Chilhowee

2007-06-19T11:54:00.001-05:00

Our group fell apart as several of the members swung through the first feed area (at mile 20) to gather food. I was, unexpectedly, the owner of an empty water bottle due to the early heat, and so I stopped to fill up as well, knowing that it would be 34 more miles with lots of climbing before I'd get the chance to fill again. Leaving in ones, twos, & threes, several riders eventually gelled into another group and within a few miles we were moving at a good clip along the foothills that lead to the flat flat flat section of US 129 that runs alongside Lake Chilhowee.

The Beast was up front putting the hurt on everybody with a pace that could only be intended to shell the weaker riders from the pack, but alongside the scenic lake, with a headwind blowing, everyone was willing to go cross-eyed to keep up. Seeing that the tough pace wasn't working, he slowed a bit and we settled in at 20 mph as we passed the boat ramps and fishing areas.

I was riding in the middle of the peleton, and we were cruising easily. No hard efforts being expended when 2 rows ahead of me, a rider suddenly swerved, clipping the front wheel of the rider behind him and knocking down that rider, who also took down several others with him. The rider to my right began to swerve into me to avoid the pileup, leaving the two of us as the likely next victims. Luckily the rider to my left had moved into the lane of oncoming traffic opening up a gap between him and the pile of twisted bikes and bodies for me to shoot through safely. The rider to my right didn't make it and became the next addition to the pile.

We all stopped and while we waited for our hearts to stop racing from the near miss, we tried to help sort out the pile, extracting bicycles and helping fallen riders to the side of the road. The motorcycle support that was following us was on the scene right away and helping as well. Despite a few bleeding elbows and knees, and a broken spoke or two, there was no serious injury and we were quickly on our way again.

I resolved that I was going to stay up front where this sort of thing doesn't happen and so I picked my way through and found Doug's wheel, with 5 miles left until the climbing began at Tabcat Creek, the entrance to the Tail Of The Dragon.

Now, I'm not the fastest climber in the world. When Cathy and I were first married, I weighed nothing and had a tremendous strength to weigh ratio and could fly up a hill. 19 years later, I'm considerably heavier and weaker, so when the road tilts up, my normal response is to let the group go on and set my own tempo, the result of which is that I watch as the group disappears up the hill ahead of me. This time however, I found that for the time being, I could match the pace set by Jeff and Doug. Noticing this, the Beast (Jeff) upped the ante and got a wheel length on me. He said to me, "thanks for leaving me in the parking lot, I won't forget it". I began to plead for mercy, but he was showing none and despite my best efforts, each time I matched his speed, he'd raise it again. About 2 1/2 miles into the first climb I finally lost sight of him for good as he rounded a corner.

The Tail Of The Dragon is my favorite part of this ride. As they proudly announce on their website, this portion of US 129 has 318 curves in 11 miles. A good video of a motorcycle riding this road is here:

Smooth roads and lots of curves keep the climbing portions interesting and make the downhill sections nothing short of thrilling. Think of rolling down a hill at 35 mph with consecutive 90s and 120s and you don't have to hit your brakes, just keep increasing the lean and you shoot right through.

Anyway, I rolled up to the 2nd feed station about 4 minutes behind The Beast, but 8 minutes slower than last year, and feeling pretty spent. I had serious doubts that I would continue the ride past the 3rd feed area. I had gone too deep, too often, too early to have much hope of finishing.

Tomorrow, What Joyce Kilmer didn't know about Trees.

Cherohala 07-Tellico Plains Pain

2007-06-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

Saturday was the big event...well, maybe no big to any of you, but it's the one I plan for all year. I'd like to say that in addition to planning for it all year, I also prepare for it all year, but life gets in the way and somehow, the preparation is never quite what I hoped it would be. Throw in a few last minute changes to the routine and you are quickly stirring a recipe for disaster.

The first change was losing two weeks of training to a trip with the Boy Scouts to the Florida Keys. I wouldn't choose to not go again, but losing those miles can really hurt.

The second change is that I'm heavier than I was last year. For some reason the weight just has really been stubborn this season and I can't seem to make it go away.

Third, my 10 year old is playing baseball. I have surprised myself by getting caught up in his joy in discovering a sport to love and let many precious Saturdays (when I usually log an 80-100 mile ride) slip away whilst I sat in the bleachers watching him shut down batters foolish enough to hit one his way at 2nd base. Yeah, I could have been riding, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed watching him.

Fourth change, and more immediate to the ride at hand was that my family ended up not joining me (my two older boys were planning to ride, but never got around to training adequately (my fault...baseball again)) and so I opted to stay in town for an All-Star game and then drive to Tellico Plains rather than drive up in the early afternoon and relax around town as I did before last years successful Challenge. Instead I arrived around 12:30, climbed into the bunk in the cabin my friends had secured and set my alarm for 5:30.

My goal this year, originally, had been to improve on last years time and set a new PR for the ride. This gradually became less of a goal and more of an "it would be nice, we'll see how it goes" as the Saturdays passed without me piling on miles. Nevertheless, this was on my mind Saturday morning as I finished suiting up and waited for The Beast and Doug to finish putting their gear together. We were laughing and giving The Beast a tough time because he'd forgotten his sweatband for his head which meant nobody would want to ride behind him and get "rained" on. The sweatband was important because, unlike last year's cool start, it was already about 80 degrees at 7:30 am. It was sometime into this Abbot and Costello act that I noticed that we were standing around by the car alone. Everyone was gone. The start line was clear and I could see bikes heading out over the hills northeast of the town.

For anyone not familiar with mass start events, let me explain something...it's always, ALWAYS!!, better to start near the front of the group and be riding with them when they leave, and not just because of the obvious reason that it's no fun to start out 5 minutes behind a pack and have to chase them for miles on end at the limit of your ability on the off-chance that you might catch a group to ride with. No, the best reason to be up front is that when "selection hill" comes along, as it always does on any group ride and the group is blown into smaller groups, you can easily choose a large enough group to make sure that you are delivered to the foot of the real climbing relatively fresh.

Now, on a ride with 450 other people, it's a given that if you're reasonably fit, you will catch some of them. The problem is that few of these stragglers will be working as a group, and if they could ride as fast as you are anyway, you wouldn't have caught them, would you? That's why they are "stragglers" and not riding in that pack that you're burning all your matches trying to catch somewhere up the road.

Thinking that The Beast and Doug were right on my wheel I took off and built up speed, settling into my drops and doing my best imitation of a time trial, watching my heart rate repeatedly go through 175 bpm as I did my best to find a group that would stick. I eventually caught up to a group after 15 miles of chasing that looked solidly large enough to stay together and not disintegrate on the rollers. Though they were moving a touch slower than I wanted to go, I decided to sit in and let my HR moderate some and try to recover. I looked around and saw the Beast and Doug catching onto the back of the group...I had left them solidly behind at the start, (Beast hadn't even put his shoes on yet...who knew?) and they had buried themselves to catch me. We all decided we could use a breather for a while and settled into this group of 20 or so (a small group yes, but large enough to get a little recovery time before the climbing started at mile 43).

to be continued...

coming tomorrow, Blood on the Shores of Lake Chilhowee, and why you shouldn't make the Beast angry by leaving him in parking lot.

Translating

2007-05-28T22:28:00.000-05:00

I learned an Indian word on Saturday. The word is Winnetaska. The first three syllables (Win-ne-tas) means "whip your...um...backside", the last syllable, "ka" means a thousand, so Winnetaska=whip your backside 1000 times.

Because that's what Camp Winnetaska road did to me on Saturday, 35 miles into my 75 mile ride. It's a hilly road, though if you're riding with other people, testosterone takes over and it's ridden as though it is flat. This was okay, and in fact, I wasn't struggling badly, staying near the front of the group having casual conversation along the way. This was my undoing...not paying attention, I suddenly found myself on a shortish, but very steep climb in the wrong gear (much much much too large) and by the time I had unknotted my legs from the effort of getting up that hill, I was all set to suffer the rest of the ride. And I did.

But I finished up and took today off. Yeah, I should have ridden, after all, Cherohala is just under 21 days away, and I'm due to be in Florida sailing about the keys for a week, which will cut mightily into my training. But I've been feeling a bit overtrained lately, and unwilling to take it easy and let myself recover properly, so it's probably a good idea to take it easy. And I don't think I'm too worried, between Cherohala 2K6 and now, I've ridden nearly 1000 miles more than I did between Cherohala 2K5 and Cherohala 2K6. So I'm probably not going to add a whole lot to the mix by doing anything extra at this point.

I'll ride the Pain Train on Tuesday night and that will be it until June 9. The P-32 theory of fitness will undoubtably come into play. The real question will be, can it be recovered in one week? I guess I'm going to find out.

Tuesday World's Redux

2007-05-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

So Tuesday night rolled around as it does once each week. Always between Monday and Wednesday. And always (except during the winter months) with a group pain festival in which to partake if you feel the need.

As I mentioned before, the A's have started to ride with us lately, and this fact makes Tuesday nights tough. This week was more of the same. The only real difference was that the smoke from the wildfires in Okeefenokee swamp was blowing through, which made all of Bham smell like a campsite.

We rolled off through Mountain Brook and through Irondale at a pace with which I was unfamiliar. Recognizing that my best chance to save energy was to suffer enough to stay near the front, I picked a solid wheel and stayed on it. Since this was a rest week, I knew I wanted a short high intensity interval that would simulate the final miles of a race and so I told myself that I would stay near the front all the way to the end of Ruffner.

Now Ruffner road is a unique experience in that it begins with a climb on which the group accelerates the whole of the rise. At the foot of the hill, we might be rolling at 15mph, but at the top, we were running 20. By the time we got over the top and on the flat beyond, we were at 28 and still going harder. As the rollers started, I was about 10th wheel and looked back to make sure I had nobody half-wheeling me when the rough road started and everyone scatters like cockroaches when the lights come on.

There was no-one behind me. In fact, there was a 50 meter gap and it was growing. I was up front, last in the first selection of riders, who, in a demonstration of the biggest difference between "A" and "B" riders were riding harder on the down-side of the rollers than they were on the up-side. ("B" riders like to go hard up the hill, but then recover on the downhill, "A" riders just go hard with no recovery). This worked perfectly into my plan for the night. I struggled and suffered, but made it to the end of Ruffner in the 4th wheel position and hit my lap button...20 seconds faster than last week's new best time.

Surprising myself, I decided that I hadn't quite spent all my energy yet, so I decided to hang as long as I could on John Rogers Drive. "As long as I could" translated to about halfway to the top beyond the light that marks the gradient change. The rider in front of me let a gap open and I just didn't have the legs to close it. So that was it for me, ride over. As the "B" group caught me, I tried to hang on to them for a while, but we were climbing 78 and I was too spent. So I took it easy and spun my way home, satisfied that I had just spent an evening with intensity that I hadn't approached in a while.

A lot of fun, and a good workout besides. Can you ask for more?

Race Tactics 210

2007-05-16T22:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome back...this week we'll look at how to race successfully after mastering the art of shaking the unwanted wheelsucker.

Step 1
Suffer. For example, just running through the warm up this past Tuesday night, I knew it was going to be tough. I felt like I was still looking for my legs after my successful, but difficult 100 miler 10 days earlier. They ached and moaned on the flats. I gave serious thought to dropping out of the TNTP, but opted to stay in for a while longer to see if the pace would drop when the group started splitting up.

Step 2 (Post Warm Up)
Suffer more. The pace past the ball fields on Ruffner was definitely higher than normal and my entire body did not fail to notice this fact. When the hammer really dropped, it was all I could do to withstand the initial onslaught of speed, but, as I had anticipated, things eased off just a touch and I was able to hang in the middle of the pack all the way to the end of Ruffner. Even though the pace eased a touch, we still did the fastest Ruffner leg of the year by 10 seconds, averaging 25.4 mph for the duration.

Step 3
Yet more suffering. On John Rogers drive they decided that I must be on the ropes and that now was a good time to finish me off. We hit the bottom of the hill (the steepest section) like a runaway freight train and flew up to the traffic light (which despite my best wishful thinking is never red). Digging deep into what Paul Sherwin calls the "suitcase of courage" I gritted my teeth and hung on for all I was worth. Slowly the riders came past me, but by the time we got to the light I was still firmly entrenched in the middle of the peleton. And even though the speed increased, the gradient decreased and so although I was wheezing like an old pipe organ, and my eyes were crossed, I made it over the top with the group and managed to keep up on the downhill back to highway 78. This isn't as tough as it might sound because on downhills, gravity likes me better than the flyweights that shoot up the hills at the speed of sound.

Step 4
A brief recovery. Highway 78 up to Old Leeds Road gave me a little time to recover, though it always gets very hard just where the hill stops climbing. It's as though I'm riding through wet cement. But by the time we make the turn onto OLR, I'm good to go again.

Step 5
Return to suffering. See this is was bike racing is all about. Suffering. Realizing that when you dangle off the back and a gap opens in front of you, that the headwind your riding into isn't going to be your friend. You have to do whatever it takes to stay on someone's wheel, or else you'll be doomed to fight the wind on your own. It takes more effort and it's slower than riding with the group. So I lost concentration and found myself letting gaps open, 10 yards this time, 20 yards next time and so on. Each time, I had to put my head down and pedal harder to get back on. By the time we got to the fire station, where the sprint to the top of the hill starts winding up, I was feeling much better, and really flying. It was about this point when I was coming up in the work line that "Mr. No-Gap-Is-Too-Small" decided to reach out and try to grab my handlebars. I really have no idea what this jerks problem is, but I'm sick of his antics. When he missed my bars, he tried the next guy in line and the next after that. Luckily he didn't get any of us, but I think someone's going to have to tell this accident looking for a place to happen that he's just not welcome to ride with us any more if he's going to be pulling that garbage. I heard quite a bit of complaining about him on the cooldown back through Mountain Brook.

Step 6
Getting home with no legs. Somehow I managed to climb Smyer and Shades Crest and make my way across and back to home. It was overall a good ride and I was extra pleased that I had forced myself to stay with it and push through when I wanted to give up and just go it alone. Yes, my legs still hurt tonight, but that's okay. They needed a wake up call, and last night's ride was just the ticket.

So the key to this lesson is suffer, and when you don't think you can hang on any longer, suffer harder. And harder still if you need to. Eventually you'll be done and the suffering will be over.

3 States, 3 Mountains

2007-05-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Saturday was the first century of the year for me. It was a mixed bag, but overall I'm happy with what I did.

Friday Afternoon
I loaded up the van with 3 Boy Scouts that I was dropping off at an Order of The Arrow Ordeal at the Boy Scout camp just off the road between Birmingham and Chattanooga. All the hotels in Chattanooga were sold out, since a lot of the 2500 riders who do this century are from out of town. In fact, places like Germany, Niger, and Toronto were represented (as was Salt Lake City, Oregon, and California).

Anyway, all the hotel were booked months ago, and so my plan was to sleep in my van (remove seats, use a pad and a blanket and pillow, sleep in the van). But my wife had expressed a concern that sleeping in the car in a strange and possibly dangerous part of town wasn't the smartest thing I could do, so when I got to the Scout Camp I asked a leader (who is in our ward) if there was a place at the camp where I could crash for the night. He said to just go use one of the bunks in his cabin. So I dropped the kids and headed to bed...early...because I needed an early start to cover the 60 miles between the camp and Chattanooga, as well as the time zone change along the way.

I had been asleep about 3 hours when I was awakened and due to noise issues, couldn't get back to sleep. I realized that if I left right then (about 1am) I could get to Chattanooga, and be asleep in my van (plan A) in time to still get a good night's rest before the ride started at 8:00. So I left camp and arrived at the Bob Finley Football Stadium in south Chattanooga. I noticed that Dirt Dog and K2 had their camper already in the lot and so I pulled up and shifted seats and started back to sleep.

It's tornado season in the south, what could I expect?
Plan A, which by now was plan C started out well enough, but just as I was drifting off to sleep, thunder and lightning began and rain started to fall hard. This slowed down my falling asleep somewhat as I pondered the implications of thunderstorms on the ride later that morning. Just as I was dozing off, the tornado sirens started up. And they didn't stop until about 4:30. So I was sitting in my car, trying to sleep, in the middle of a large open area (a stadium parking lot), with tornado sirens sounding all night. If it hadn't been for the noise, the terror would have kept me awake anyway.

Morning has broken
Occasionally, as the time went by, more vehicles started arriving, their occupants trying to catch up on sleep. One of the great things about spending the night this way was that in the morning, my car was parked right next to the start line, as close as I could get to the stadium facilities (toilets, showers, covered and warm areas, etc).

When morning finally arrived, it was cold. Much colder than I ever thought it could be in May in the south. I gave serious consideration to biting the bullet on a pair of tights and arm warmers but decided that I should bear the cold as punishment for not bringing my own.

Having made that decision, the rain began again.

This was a good thing...you see, I had my Goretex rain gear with me. All I needed was an excuse to wear it. I decided that it wasn't raining hard enough to worry about my legs or feet, and just went with the jacket. Later this would prove to be the smartest thing I'd done all day (I could have been smarter and skipped the jacket altogether, but I'll get to that in a minute).

BANG!!
I got my act together just in time for my sleep deprived shivering body to arrive at the start and push my way in as the ride officially began.

I've done some large rides before (Rosarito-Ensenanda, 10,000 riders; Solvang, 4,500 riders; Tour De Sewer, 3000+) but I've never seen a mass start begin more slowly than this. We crawled north through downtown as people worked their way into position and up and down the pack looking for friends and likely riding companions. The rain falling may have had an effect on the pace as well, since people seemed to be extra cautious in corners and crosswalk areas.

Suck Creek Mountain
Eventually we left the downtown area (said area actually being a very nice and pleasant downtown area, btw) and continued northwest toward the Cumberland Plateau. After about 5 miles, the rain stopped and by 10 miles out the roads were fairly dry as well. Coincidentally, this is also where the first mountain begins. (I probably should mention that the theme of this event is 3 mountains in 3 states.) This first mountain is Suck Creek Mountain, in Tennessee. About 200 yards into the climb I realized that I was going to have to shed the rain jacket as I was overheating and just having it open wasn't enough. So I pulled to the side to remove the jacket, pack it away into its pocket and strap it to my waist.

Suck Creek Mountain was a very pleasant climb. It lasts a touch over 5 miles and averages about 5%. I noticed on the side of the road, a little creek rushing along, obviously swollen from the rain of the past several hours, similar to the creek that follows the road to Sundance from Provo Canyon. I was impressed with how scenic this climb was. I climbed at a comfortable pace, being passed by probably a hundred riders, but passing that many more myself. Before I knew it, I had reached the top and started down the other side. I'll just say right now that the descent from the top of Suck Creek Mountain is worth the price of the ride by itself. 5 miles of non stop 40mph descending through big sweeping curves and hairpins that drop out from underneath you like an elevator will put a grin on your face that it would take a disaster to remove. (oooh...foreshadowing...oooh)

This is not a mountain
From the bottom of Suck Creek Mountain, you begin traveling south southwest, eventually skirting along the shores of Nickajack Lake on the Tennessee River. Along the banks of Nickajack Lake, having turned west onto the south side of the lake, you begin climbing a relatively steep little grade, probably 7-8% that last a mile or so. The organizers, with typically sadistic organizer humor painted on the road the words, "this is not a mountain". Well, technically I'm sure they are correct. However, it certainly felt like a mountain and I for one consider their painted comment needlessly antagonistic...after all, one rider's "roller" is another hill slug's mountain.

Sand Mountain
Turning south away from Nickajack Lake, we crossed into Alabama and the roads immediately went to h.e. double hockey sticks. (insert rolly eyes here, as lousy pavement is a hallmark of rural Alabama life) Fortunately, this beat up pot-holed corncob that passes for a rural super-speedway didn't last but a couple of miles and then we turned off this teeth rattler and onto smoother pavement. On a less positive note, turning off this road also signaled the start of the second mountain (in, if you are keeping track, our second state), Sand Mountain. Yes, the very Sand Mountain made famous in the book Salvation on Sand Mountain...Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (we've got all kinds of strange things down here that kind of make the phrase "y'all come back now , ya hear!?" more of a dare, than an invitation).

Anyway, keeping a careful eye out for hill people who might want to redeem my sin racked, lycra covered soul by tossing a copper-headed-water-rattler at me, I settled into a pace that would let me finish this 7% 3 mile long grade with something left for the final state, mountain, and 40 miles. Like Suck Creek Mountain, I really enjoyed the scenery as the road wound its way up through the forest of pine and hardwoods. It was a smooth road with several switchbacks and well shaded. Had the day been hot, it would have been a pleasant place to be. Unfortunately for me, it hadn't started raining yet, which meant I still have my rain jacket tied around my waist, and it kept slipping down which meant I was trying to ride and keep the jacket adjusted at the same time.

Something else I should mention. So far, since September, I haven't put in more than 40 miles in a single ride. This fact alone conspired with the Sand Mountain climb to create an aching in my lower back that still haunted me through Fast and Testimony meeting yesterday. Calogipi said she was proud of me for staying awake during the meeting. What she didn't know was that I was in too much pain to fall asleep, (the chairs are not comfortable on a good day, let alone a day when you're already hurting). So anyway, though my back was hurting by the time I got to the top of Sand Mountain, I had successfully climbed the second mountain, and avoided reptile inflicted redemption. Unlike Suck Creek Mountain, once atop Sand Mountain, you have to cross the plateau before you get the payoff and get to descend the other side. In the case of Sand Mountain, this is about 25 miles of rolling roads that never let up. But somewhere along the way, I noticed that we had passed into Georgia (with 42 accompanying signs explaining the traffic laws that are unique to Georgia). Finally across the top, the descent was steep, winding and fast, but not as fun as the first descent back in Tennessee.

Lookout Mountain
Now in our third state, and again in the valley, we crossed under I-59 and though dreading the last climb, it came up quickly enough. Right after crossing under the interstate, there is an incredibly steep, but shortish hill to climb. This only gets you over a ridge and you drop right back down again. A few miles later you reach a food stop at the bottom of the Lookout Mountain Climb. This climb is the same one that the Tour De Georgia used a couple of weeks ago for their Individual Time Trial. It lasts for 2.5 miles at a steady 9%, with the final 3/10's mile at 18% over Burkhalter's Gap. While this hill was a whole new level in sheer torture and agony (my knees had joined my lower back in protesting the abuse being heaped upon them), I noticed something that I had noticed a couple of years ago while climbing Brasstown Bald at the Tour De Georgia...the energy you get from a crowd. Because there were crowds up in Burkhalter's Gap, and they were cheering and ringing cowbells and had written with sidewalk chalk all over the road, and it gives you energy. Somehow all their enthusiasm and energy is shared with the riders and you dig deeper and get going faster than you ever could do on your own. I actually smiled as I suffered up that last 1/3 of a mile.

From the top of Lookout Mountain, it's much the same as Sand Mountain in that you have to cross the rolling top of the mountain before you get to descend. In this case, you reach the top of Burkhalter's Gap at 83 miles into the ride, and begin descending back into Chattanooga at 93 miles. Like Suck Creek Mountain, the Lookout Mountain descent is fast, not too steep, and fun. The final miles through town back to the stadium were pleasant and I enjoyed the fact that I had finished what I had set out (but not prepared properly) to do.

Some quick notes and conclusions:

1. This event is very well organized. Every intersection on the route has police directing traffic, giving cyclists the right of way. That's almost unheard of for events this long.

2. I'm glad I chose to leave my rain pants in the car. I was annoyed most of 90 miles by the jacket hanging from my waist and I can't imagine how frustrated I'd have been having to schlep paints around as well.

3. I really like large events. The huge number of cyclists makes for interesting conversations and except for a brief period of time right after the turnoff for the metric riders, I was never out of sight of another rider. I enjoy that type of ride.

4. This isn't the hardest ride I've done, but I enjoyed it as much as any other. The variety in terrain and scenery, the event organization, and the weather all combined to make this a very enjoyable day.

5. I am definitely going back next year. And taking people with me. Calogipi wants to come and I want her to see it. The Beast will want to ride, and maybe I can bring Russ out of retirement to try another century (they'll have to let him out of France first, but there's a possibility).

6. Fun. Tired. Sore. Those all add up to a day well spent.

7. Oh, and that "foreshadowing" thing earlier...naw. I had a great time.

Race Tactics 110

2007-04-13T15:05:00.000-05:00

Welcome to beginning race tactics. Sure, this will be remedial for some of you, but others may learn something new that they will want to try when the opportunity next presents itself. So, there's the gun, and we've all clipped in...off we go!

Today's lesson is on how to drop a rider, or group of riders, that you would prefer not be sucking your wheel. These "wheelsuckers" are a drain on your energy because they let you stay up front in the wind while they consererve energy and get a good meal while they sit in your draft. When someone doesn't want to work, it's best to get rid of them, pronto. Here are some time honored, tried and true methods for shucking that wheelsucker.

The Shake And Bake
This technique was demonstrated by Kevin Costner in the movie, American Flyers (co-starring Rae Dawn Chong and the virgin, Connie Swail...you know that had to be a box office smash). In this manuever, you swerve suddenly and violently to one side of the road and back in an attempt to catch the wheelsucker unawares, quickly depriving him of your draft, forcing him to suddenly have to put down his sandwich and au jus and start pedaling if he doesn't want to find himself on his own in no man's land. I thought they might have been trying this move on Ruffner road last Tuesday, but it turns out, they were just dodging potholes.

The 2 for 1 Gap
No, this isn't a sale on overpriced clothes at the mall. To work this extraordinarily effective move, you need a teammate along with you, or someone you can talk into playing Curly to your Larry, and your opponents Moe. Maneuver your teammate (or "friend") so that he is between you and the person(s) you want to drop. When you give the signal, he immediately should start applying his brakes. This allows a gap to open and you are on your own, off the front. If you have an emergency, bring your friend up alongside you, accelerate quickly and suddenly, opening up a 2 foot gap between you and the rider behind. Your friend should without any warning at all jump into that gap and slow down. This is probably more effective than the first variation as it will certainly cause a thinning of the peleton due to various fractures and equipment malfunctions ocurring behind.

The Snot Bomb
This little trick works best during allergy season, or anytime that you have a head cold. Simply turn your head, close one nostril with your thumb, and forcefully expel any stored fluid through the other nostril. If you miss and the undesired wheelsucker is still clinging on, just remember you have another barrel you can use if need be. Another important tip, if you're low on ammo, combine this move with the Shake and Bake to increase your chances of a direct hit. And remember, you don't have to actually hit the rider for this one to work. If you leave a little shrapnel on the mouthpiece of his water bottle, for example, it'll have the desired effect when he gets thirsty. Just be patient.

The Fake Snot Bomb
If you find you have neither allergies, nor a head cold, don't fret. You can still use the Fake Snot Bomb to your advantage. Simply turn your head, and in the instant before you accelerate, yell loudly, "Snot Bomb!". Be sure the road ahead is clear because you'll want to watch the fun as they scatter behind you. This particular tactic is a favorite of my friend, Jeff Mills, who has perfected its use to a remarkable degree.

The Ego Method
Lastly (and I don't recommend this for everyone), is the Ego Method. Using this requires an ego that says "I'm stronger than you, and I'm going to prove it." It goes without saying that if you're going to attempt this, you better have the legs to back it up. I last saw this technique put to use on Tuesday evening, during the group ride, when at the end of Ruffner road (with several incidents of either pot-hole dodging, or Shake and Bake behind us), Ricky Bobby Bubba went to the front at the foot of the hill on Dog Track and set a pace up the hill that strung the bunch out before we got to the first crossroad. By then, there were of us left, Ricky Bobby Bubba, Mallory, Dirt Dog, and myself. Dirt Dog and I were cross-eyed with effort to stay out of the wind and on his wheel, and the farther we went up, the faster he pulled. When it was over, we had caught remnants of the group that started 10 minutes ahead of us, and the carnage among our group was spread out over a quarter mile down the hill behind us.

Yes, Ricky Bobby Bubba pulled off the Ego Method. I was impressed. I can't pull that fast...I can only suck wheel that fast.

A Night At The Races

2007-03-28T08:29:00.000-05:00

I want to ride my bicycle...I want to ride my bike...

Yesterday was Tuesday here in Birmingham. That means that in the evening you can join the Tuesday Night Pain Train and get all you can take of suffering.

For me, this was my first attempt at hurting myself. In previous weeks I'd been coming off this nasty respiratory infection sweeping through Birmingham, and had family commitments, so I had cut my rides short before the real pain began. Not so last night. Things were relatively moderate as we worked out way out through the neighborhoods to the east side of town (Irondale), and I found myself near the front thinking (hoping?) that things wouldn't be too hard later.

Jaws was never my style, and I don't like Star Wars

Well, I did like Star Wars, but anyway...when the hammer dropped on Ruffner Road, my legs were quickly re-aquainted with their enemies, aches and cramps. Ruffner was fast. And sloppy. Between one rider ( a triathlete) who insisted on riding in her aero bars (a huge group riding no-no) and another rider who would jump out of the recovery line into anything remotely resembling a gap in the work line (which makes everyone behind the psuedo-gap slow up to avoid a pile-up, never mind what it does to the recovery line) it was a nervous, and skittish return to racing.

At the end of Ruffner, I had a quick 30 seconds to recover before we turned onto John Rogers Drive (aka Dog Track) and the speed wound up again. Only this time, it's faster. And uphill. I spent most of JRD yo-yo-ing off the back of the main group into no man's land and catching back up again. Mr. "I'll jump into any gap, no matter how small" nearly took me down as I was winding up for the sprint to the bridge. I was quite annoyed. A crash at 30 mph would have been painful.

D2 and Rick went to the front on 78 and so the pace going up the hill to Old Leeds Road was reasonable, and I had a good 3-4 minutes to recover before the pace skyrocketed and my leg cramps returned. So I slowed a bit as I dug some endurolytes out of my pocket and sucked them down. Then I had to chase to get back to the group, fighting the cramps until the magic capsules did their work and I could return to full power.

Well, if I thought Ruffner was fast, Old Leeds was considerably faster. But Old Leeds was re-paved last year, so it's smooth and fast, where Ruffner is potholed and nasty rough for large sections. Anyway, speed was high and the legs were hurting, but I kept remembering that I was nearly finished for the night and I just had to stay with them through the sprint to the top of the hill, then I could rest on the 40 mph downhill before the rollers around Mt. Brook Country Club started up.

Results

Unofficially of course. There are no results to these "races" except, did you hang? Or did you get shelled? For me, the satisfying answer is that while I struggled on Dog Track (no surprise there, climbing hills at 20mph+ is not my forte), I was never in any real danger of getting dropped unless I decided to quit. This means I am considerably more fit than I was at this point last year, despite a month of feeling lousy and not getting more than 20 miles a week in.

It's also clear that most of the cool kids are also stronger at this point this year than last, as the pace was high and painful.

I have a new century I'm doing the first weekend in May, in Chattanooga, TN. It's got plenty of climbing, and I'm hoping that it will be a good building event for Cherohala 5 weeks later. But I've got to be able to finish it, and so I'll suffer on Tuesdays, even though I'd like to take it easier this early in the year.

Bottom line, I'm feeling more confident today than I was yesterday. Of course it could all come unhinged next Tuesday. One thing I'm definitely noticing is that each year it's a little harder physically, but I have an easier time digging mentally. Maybe what age takes away in one area, it gives back in another.

Daylight Savings Time

2007-03-15T09:14:00.000-05:00

My health returned this week, along with Daylight Savings Time, and the corresponding Tuesday Night Worlds ride. It's been a miserable few weeks, as I was dealing with allergies, that became a sinus infection, leading to a bronchial irritation that had me coughing and just plain miserable. Worse, I'd wake up feeling good one morning and ride to work and back, and be back to misery the next day. This kept up for several weeks, until I got a Z-Pack and killed off the Sinusitis, which immediately improved my overall feeling of "I'm finally on my way out of this". In fact, today is the 4th day in a row that I've felt healthy...so I'm happy.

Tuesday night was the first "kill your grandmother and sell your firstborn to get ahead" ride of the year. I was still pretty worn out from being sick and so I didn't know what to expect. Besides, I'd only ridden 20 miles a week for a month. With a family commitment keeping my available ride time shorter than the full ride, I knew I had to make the hour I had count. Riding out, up the first absolutely inconsequential hill (and I mean tiny tiny tiny), my legs ached. An ache that didn't stop until long after the ride was finished. But I rode at the front for 35 minutes, and then by myself back into wind for 25 more. I wasn't unhappy, just sore. But mostly just glad to be out with the club again.

So yesterday when I woke up, I debated with myself whether I needed a rest from the night before (trying to avoid relapsing into sickness), but decided that I needed the miles more, so I suited up and rode into the office. It wasn't bad, especially considering that I had no winter clothing of any kind on whatsoever (yea, it's getting warm now). Last night's ride home was even better...even though it felt like I was hurting badly, I made very good time on my climbs, staying in tough gears to put pressure on my legs. This is my strategy for improving my climbing this year...train in bigger gears on the climbs to build leg strength.

Anyway, two consecutive days of riding and I'm not sick today (though it's raining pretty hard, so I won't be outside). I'll get out the rollers for a nice recovery spin tonight and get a long ride in this weekend.

Woohoo!! It feels good to be back on the bike again!

Sick, Tired, and Cold

2007-02-11T20:46:00.000-06:00

My wife, Calogipi, was complaining on her blog that nobody is writing lately, so I've gathered myself for a stab at it tonight...if for no other reason than this blog is sort of like a journal for me, and since I loathe the thought of actually keeping a journal, this works for me.

I started out this "rest week" with the intentions to put in the small number of quality hours that I was scheduled to ride, and to meet this goal. Having a scheduled goal to work toward works best for me. I like to say "I'm going to ride 8 hours this week", and then keep track of each workout as I watch the hours add up. There's a definite satisfaction in meeting a goal.

Tuesday night I hit the rollers and put in a 90 minute workout in the garage. Wednesday I was sick. Sore throat, stuffy head. The usual February sick that I get. To make matters worse, it got cold. I mean, down in the 20's in the morning cold, which ruled out doing any riding at all anyway, even if I wasn't feeling miserable and experiencing the corresponding lack of energy.

Plenty of rest and plenty of meds later, this morning, I left the house at 6:00 am feeling pretty good. Though that didn't last, and by the time I got home at 10 minutes of 7 tonight, I was pretty wiped out.

So my hope for this coming week...by Wednesday at the latest, I'm able to get back on the bike and hit it hard. I've been doing Spinervals DVDs (I have 6 of them) and they're great for an indoor workout. I'll start off with the Base Builders this week to get some of what I've lost this week back. My goal for the week is 7.5 hours. Hopefully I'll get a long ride in on Saturday to help meet this goal.

A Bad Decision

2007-01-30T10:16:00.000-06:00

Saturday I was scheduled to be at Winter Youth Conference with the kids from the ward. The site was about an hour from here, and offered two ride opportunities with unique characteristics to choose between. Ride 1-To the top of Mt. Cheaha (the highest point in Alabama) and back. Lots and lots of climbing on steep grades. Ride 2-The Chief Ladiga Trail...a Rails to Trails project that extends nearly to the state border shared with Georgia (later this spring the final 8 miles of the trail will be complete, connecting the CLT with the Silver Comet Trail which will enable a rider to go from Jacksonville, AL to Atlanta and back).

Unfortunately, late Friday night, I chose a third option, no ride. I just decided it would be too much hassle to load all my bike stuff on the car and haul it for an hour, not really knowing what the opportunity to ride might be.

Shortly after arriving at the conference site, a friend from another ward in the stake (Bishop F) arrived with his bike on top of his car. He dropped the kids off and went to ride the CLT.

Now I'm kicking myself because it's been two weeks since I've ridden and I'm going crazy. The weather is colder than normal and so if I'm to get any riding in this week, it'll be on the rollers. Meanwhile, Saturday, which was a nice day, was wasted.

Bummer.

The Windeater

2007-01-16T23:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday Jeff was still in town thanks to the storms in the Midwest that kept him from leaving for home. So we hooked up and did another ride. The weather wasn't as nice as Saturday, in fact, it threatened to rain all morning, but a ride under threatening skies is better than no ride at all.

Leaving Indian Springs, we swung past Doug's house and the three of us headed down Cahaba Valley Road toward Leeds. Along the way, the discussion went like this:

Jeff: So, where are we going to ride?
Me: I don't care, as long as it's flat today, I'm feeling a bit worn out.
Doug: I'd kinda like to keep it flat too.
Jeff: So, why don't we go over Hugh Daniels Drive then past Shoal Creek and then over 25, back down 119 and then home.
Me: Why don't you go up Hugh Daniels Drive, turn around, and come back to the bottom and meet us there. Then we can just do Jeff's suggestion in reverse.
Doug: That sounds good.
Jeff: I'll just skip going up HDD and stay with you guys.

Now, a note about Hugh Daniels. Hugh Daniels was a sadist. His road climbs over Double Oak Mountain (mountains such as they are in the south) in a stair step fashion, climb for 1/4 mile at 12-14%, then level off for a bit, then climb another 1/4 mile at 14-15%, then level off for a bit, then repeat and repeat until you reach the top. This doesn't sound too bad when you see that there are little sections, maybe 2/10's of a mile long that are "level". But "level" is compared to what you have been climbing, and in this case, "level" is still a 8-10% grade.

Jeff knows that I hate (in fact, while I don't like the word "Hate", it isn't a strong enough word to describe my deep utter loathing for Hugh Daniels Drive) this climb. He always suckers me into riding it, then he goes home and yuks it up with his wife about how he got me again.

So as we approach the beginning of Hugh Daniels Drive, Jeff turns onto it, and Doug follows him. Now you might be saying, "what a fool you are, TKP, for following them when the plan was to skip it and go the other way". I'd have to agree, but you see, I knew all along that there was no way we weren't going to be riding up this beast. I knew it Sunday evening when Jeff called and said he wanted to ride. There was no way he was going to drive back to Tulsa without having ridden his favorite hill. So, like the sucker that I am, I followed them. Yes it hurt. No, I didn't enjoy climbing it any more than ever before. I dislike this climb as much as I ever did. So, yes, I'm a fool. But you do what you have to do.

We then climbed back over Double Oak Mountain on 25, then turned and found that they'd repaved my favorite road in all of Birmingham, Bailey Road. This road climbs up over a little ridge seperating Cahaba Valley and Sicard Hollow, and is windy and twisty and turny and just a lot lot lot of fun. Unfortunately, I haven't ridden it in at least 2 years because the surface was just so beat up and nasty. So that was fun, riding one of my favorite roads all nice and smooth with fresh pavement.

Turning back the way we came to head home the wind picked up significantly as the forecasted storm front began moving into our area. As a side note, the Matabele tribe (Africa) used the phrase "Eat the Wind" as a war cry, and their warriors were appropriately known as "Windeaters". Luckily for us (Doug and I), Jeff is a wind-eater, having lived and ridden in the land of never ending wind (Tulsa) for the past two years. This meant that all Doug and I had to do was settle in behind Jeff, and let him knock a hole in the wind for us to move through. A theory that works exceptionally well when the pulling rider (Jeff in this case) can move through a headwind at 20+ mph. Hey, I can't do it, so I might as well let him pull. :)

All in all, it was a good ride, my legs were sore, but I remembered to eat before leaving home and I drank and fed myself consistently along the ride, so I never had any impending energy problems. I was slower climbing the hills than I wanted to be, but it's early in the season, and if I start putting in the effort, the vertical velocity will return.

As I loaded my bike on the car to drive home, the first raindrop fell and it rained the remainder of the day. I'm glad I got a ride in.

Shorts and Short Sleeves in January

2007-01-14T16:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday Jeff Mills was in town (technically he's still in town today, but we're not riding today) and we hooked up and went riding. Jeff showed up at my house a few minutes earlier than I was expecting him and so I neglected to eat breakfast, a mistake that would haunt me later. We left the BBC and headed for the hills of Mountain Brook. There were about 15 of us at the start, but the group whittled itself down as we climbed Dell, then Smyer, then Old Brook Trail. Eventually there were 8 of us left.

Heading east on Sicard Hollow, I felt the initial bonk halfway up the first hill. I lost contact with the group, but caught back on at the foot of the second hill. The pace up this hill was more than my nutritionally challenged legs could manage and I bonked hard. By the time I crested the hill, there was nobody left in sight. I gritted my teeth and struck out to just make it to the end of the road, 6-7 miles distant, where we had agreed to regroup. Eventually I caught sight of Jeff, who noticed I was leading from the rear and dropped back to assist me. With his Tulsa-trained wind breaking skills, I was able to suck wheel, and remember to begin eating some Hammer Gel and eventually we caught back up to the group. The Hammer Gel was taking effect and I began to feel pretty good, as we continued up and over the rollers. Jeff rolled off the front on his own, and we let him go, as we were running 25 mph and didn't feel much like going harder. But from the back came the triathlete of the group (doesn't every group in Birmingham have a triahtlete?), training for Ironman Brazil, flying past us. I looked at Doug Daughetee to see if we were going to give it a go...and he was already gone. I responded as best as I could and got on Doug's wheel. We caught the Ironman but could only hold on as we began the last mile of Rex Lake Road and passed Jeff at 34 mph.

At the Chevron mini-mart where we were re-grouping, I grabbed a banana, and a powerbar to try and bolster my efforts to fight back the bonk that would surely be coming if I let up at all.

Leaving the mini-mart, we headed back west toward Birmingham, and then turned north toward Trussville on Floyd Bradford road. I love this road. It rolls and is very very fast, especially with a group to share the pulling load. I struggled at times to keep up on some of the harder rollers as my legs were starting to feel the effects of earlier bonk and I was fighting that "cramping" feeling. On Queenstown road (after a tough climb), again, it is very fast, but at the end Queenstown, it has a set of descending 90 degree turns that are just as fun as anything you can imagine...

Unfortunately, the farther we went (but at least closer to the end) the more my legs began cramping, until riding up at short climb near the end I had to stop pedaling for a minute to let the cramp seizing my upper thigh subside.

Clearly my big mistake was not eating before riding, but it's easy to lose the good habits you build on long rides (eating and drinking frequently, eating before leaving, etc) when you spend months where your primary riding experiences are only 30-40 minutes long.

On a positive note, I had a great time riding with Jeff and Doug, and the weather couldn't have been nicer. The 14th of January. We had no winter clothes on at all, no tights, no wind vests, no long fingered gloves, no warm under-layers. It was 72 degrees. It's tough to top a day like that.

On the other hand, I've obviously got a bit of work to do before June.

My date with destiny

2007-01-05T16:26:00.000-06:00

Okay, that's probably just a little dramatic, but hey, it got you to read didn't it?

June 16, 2007. Tellico Plains, Tennessee. The Cherohala Challenge. My goal? 7 hours or better.

Now that it's in writing, I'm committed. (Heck, I've even been known to write down, as goals, stuff that I've already done, just to have accomplishments written down...so take that for what it's worth).

My rollers are calling me..."...come let us hurt you, we'll make you strong, we'll make you efficient."

That's nice, but I'm really just hoping you'll make me faster. Because if I'm going to finish CC in under 7, I'm going to have to fly on the 40 miles before the climbing starts, and still have strength left for the other 75 miles.

Training in earnest starts yesterday.

A Most Dangerous Christmas Gift

2007-01-04T14:46:00.000-06:00

Rollers.

My mother gave me, for Christmas, a gift card to Performancebike.com and I spent it buying rollers. Since I chose what I spent it for, I can't blame the end result on her, and that's okay, because I'll happily give her (and my wife who chipped in the balance that the card didn't cover) the credit when my balance is top notch and my spin as smooth and efficient as a RR engine.

Yeah, that's a bit over the top, but you know what I mean.

In the interim however, there's this problem of learning to ride them properly. Once I got the rollers assembled, I threw my bike on and gave them a try. Ooops! I knew what to expect, and yet, I was still surprised to find myself sideways within one half second. Using the beam support post in the garage, I was able to spend 5 minutes (dressed in jeans and a t-shirt) trying to get the feel of them. It didn't happen, and I was no closer to riding without holding onto support than I was before I got on.

The next day I decided to give it another try, this time following a Saturday club ride. I got home put the bike up on the rollers and immediately was hugging that support post with both arms as I began to shoot straight off the side. So maybe trying to learn rollers after being fatigued isn't such a good idea either.

Monday morning seemed cold and wet-ish outside...the perfect day to learn to ride my new rollers! I set them up, this time in a doorway, put a water bottle on my bike (prematurely feeling a bit cocky that I was going to need that fluid after mastering this new skill), and mounted up.

Boom! Left shoulder straight into the door jamb. But I'm still up and turning the cranks. Slam! Right shoulder bumps the other side of the door opening, and richocets me straight back over to that left side again, which is still smarting from the bump it received 1.5 seconds ago.

So I swallowed my pride and decided to start over, this time holding on with one hand until I could ride relatively straight. This was mildly successful at first...but I was still moving around too much, so I concentrated on smoothing out my pedal stroke. This brought a much quicker improvement and emboldened, I let go of the door jamb to put both hands on the bars. This also was accomplished with the bike only moving to the edge of the rollers, and not off of them completely.

Now I was feeling really smug and decided to try for that water bottle.

I should have been wearing a helmet, because it wasn't my shoulder that struck the door jamb this time. But...I kept upright and got things back under control. At this point, I'd been riding about 5 minutes. Leaving the water alone, I decided that I'd do 30 minutes and just concentrate on spinning smoothly and looking ahead instead of down. I made it through the rest of the ride with only one further incident and came away feeling pretty good, and looking forward to the next opportunity to spend some time with my new toy. A busy schedule kept Tuesday out of the mix, yesterday I opted to ride to work and back, taking advantage of the good weather. But today is drizzly and cold. The perfect weather to spend the evening with a Tour DVD and my bike.

I can't wait to get home.

Half the speed...Twice the pain

2006-12-30T23:16:00.000-06:00

Today was my first ride in 3 weeks. Every year I swear to myself that I won't throw December away and start all over again after Christmas, and every year I do it anyway. I'm already resolving to be more disciplined next December. On the other hand, I once again had the opportunity to test the P-32 Fitness theory. I can call this experiment in deterioration of form a success.

I left the house this morning under cloudy and breezy skies, bundled up to stay warm and hurrying to make it to the shop across town where the boys were meeting for the ride start. I got there in plenty of time, fighting a head-wind the entire way.

We left and headed out to run the Tuesday Night Worlds route. The pace seemed easy enough through the neighborhoods, but every couple of blocks it would notch up just a touch. By the time we hit Ruffner Road, we were running just a touch under Summertime pace and flying along, up and down and over the rollers. At some point, (exactly where that point was is still somewhat hazy to me, as I was cross-eyed keeping up) everyone remembered that this was December, not July, and that it wouldn't look uncool to ride slowly. Or at least, more slowly than we were.

The only problem with this theory is that I (and presumably, others in the group) discovered that, particularly on the hills, going half the normal speed, hurts just as badly as going fast, and lasts twice as long.

Needless to say, for the remainder of my renewed efforts at training will be either on flat roads, or I will put in real effort on the hills.

Cold Feet

2006-12-08T09:57:00.000-06:00

Saturday I went out with the boys from the club. It was to be a ride with lots of climbing, so I wasn't worried about getting warm once things got going. When I pedaled out of the driveway at 8:00 am, it was 34 degrees. I had arm warmers, light tights, and a wind vest.

Big mistake.

After climbing out of the hole in the mountain where we live, I started descening the north side of Shades Mountain, where I quickly became reaquainted with my loathing for frozen fingers and toes. By the time I arrived in Crestline for the ride start at 9:00, I could barely squeeze my brake levers, shifting was out of the question, and my feet felt like blocks of ice attached to the end of my legs.

At this point I was thinking, "thank heavens for shoe covers. Too bad I didn't put mine on today. Do I even know where they are?"

We left to ride, and yes, there was plenty of climbing. My legs were plenty warm, and I even took off my arm warmers and my fingers thawed out. But my feet remained frozen.

Once I got home and got my feet warmed sufficiently, I went out to the garage and started looking through boxes until I found my nice warm winter booties (shoe covers). Fleece lined, neoprene outside. I resolve to wear them on every ride until February at least.

The only thing I hate worse than cold feet, is wet feet.

Hard Day

2006-11-24T22:36:00.000-06:00

It was my first ride of the week today. Seemed like the perfect opportunity to burn off yesterday's extra calories, (though I managed to keep it under control). It was a group ride, an honorarium ride for a former member of the club who was diagnosed with Lukemia a few years back. He isn't doing well right now and is in hospice care. So we went out and did a ride for him today.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the legs I had even a month ago. There was a lot of climbing on this ride, and my legs are very sore tonight.

On the plus side, the weather was wonderful...high sixties to low seventies. More of the same tomorrow. And each day until mid week.

Looks like it's time to put some miles in.

Dull these days

2006-11-22T10:41:00.000-06:00

It's too cold to ride. Well, ordinarily not, but since I'm fighting (pretty well I might add) the nasty head cold that made it's way through our home last week, I'm avoiding being sweaty outside when it's in the low 30's.

And I can't seem to motivate myself to hook up my trainer to ride indoors when it isn't raining outside.

Other things have been happening though...

I finished building up the old Trek frameset. Using some of my old parts, and some parts donated by the Beast, Kenny now has a bike most 16 year olds would kill for...OCLV Frameset, Shimano 9spd Dura Ace Shifters with Ultegra derailleurs, FSA compact crankset, an ITM Millineum stem, and a Specialized Carbon seatpost (the one that came on my Tarmac, since I'm using a lighter FSA carbon post). I put my old Spinergy Spox wheels on, since he's light enough that they'll still be stiff wheels for him. With the Speedplay X2 pedals, the bike weighs 17.5 lbs.

Now Twister has Kenny's old Trek 1000, and Brayden has Twister's old (43cm) Trek 1000.

Since we were all set, and Saturday was a nice day, I took the three boys out for a ride late Saturday afternoon. We did the greenway along Lakeshore, up the bottom half of Smyer to where the road is closed for repairs, and back again. A short 8 miles for Kenny, Twister, and me...a bit longer 8 for Brayden, who was on his first road bike ride ever. He did well, and I'm looking forward to spending more time riding with my boys. And Cathy too.

Russ and I are hoping to get out and do a short 25 or 30 on Friday, before we have to work at the Christmas Tree lot for the scouts. Kenny and Twister will ride with us, so it should be a good ride. I'm looking forward to Friday.

Up, Down, Up...

2006-11-06T12:11:00.000-06:00

I'm speaking of the temperature.

Last Monday, it was okay, not warm, but not bitingly cold either. Tuesday it was a little colder, Wednesday, the wind appeared along with even lower temps, and by the time I left the house on Friday morning, bundled to the point I felt like the michelin man, it was just downright unpleasant.

Today, it'll be back up to near 70. Then raining and cold tomorrow. Then warm and sunny again on Wednesday.

But I'm determined to keep riding to work at least when it isn't raining. I worked too hard this last spring and summer to throw all that away by getting lazy now. If I keep pushing through, I know I'll come out in the spring faster for my efforts.

It's just more work than fun right now.

I just can't let it go...

2006-11-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

Last night, on my commute home, I was noodling along, feeling pretty good. I had climbed up over Highland and down through English Village, through Mountain Brook Village and along the Shades Creek Greenway to Columbiana. Columbiana is the tough climb on this version of my route (Smyer is closed for repairs for the next 2.5 months), about 3/4 mile at ~8%. I had just started the climb, and thought I would just take it easy, spin up nice and slow and keep things under control.

BUT!

I was passed.

For about 2 seconds I didn't care. Then it registered...I was just passed. The thoughts spinning through my head...can I just let that go without a response? How can I call myself a rider if I don't at least try to take back what was mine?

So I shifted to a harder gear, stood up and started climbing. The gap started to shrink. Then it stabilized as the beam of my light became visible on the ground around him, and he, realizing I was coming, increased his effort as well.

Slowly I pulled up even with him and for the last 1/4 mile we traded tire-width leads until with 50 yards left I went hard and finally left him behind as I crossed the summit 15 yards in front.

Not a word was spoken between us. There was an inate understanding that this was a race to which we were the only witnesses. On the line? Nothing but the personal satisfaction of having beaten someone on a climb, and the establishment of the Alpha cyclist betwixt just the two of us.

I know that the next time we meet on that climb, he'll remember the time I beat him to the top, and he'll work harder.

So will I.

It's Finally Back

2006-10-31T11:46:00.000-06:00

My Trek. I originally had the frameset sent to the factory in Wisconsin for inspection and repainting (after I crashed it into the garage while pulling in and forgetting it was atop the car).

It came back sometime at the end of July, first part of August (I don't recall exactly) and it was not acceptable...the paint was bubbled on the top tube. So it went back again.

3 weeks later, it was returned again. Not only did they not fix the bubbled paint on the top tube, it now had other blemishes as well. So we sent it a third time.

Friday the shop called to tell me it was back. "Third times gotta be the charm" they said. Apparently that isn't necessarily the truth. Yes, they had fixed the bubbled paint, and the other blemishes as well, but a spot of clearcoat had rubbed off, (or they missed a spot during finishing) behind the seat-tube.

Yesterday the shop called to tell me that they had talked to Trek and rather than send it back for a 4th repaint, Trek was giving up and letting me keep it without charge.

So I'm finally done with my Trek saga, and K&C will both have bikes that fit, as I'm giving K the newly repainted OCLV frameset.

We'll spend the next couple of nights building it up together. That'll be a good father/son thing to do. Right?

I thought so too.

Where did fall go?

2006-10-31T11:40:00.000-06:00

It seems as though we've gone from hot hot hot, dropped straight through pleasant fall temps and bottomed out at colder than crud. All in just a few days. I didn't think I'd need to get out my winter tights and arm warmers until December, but no, the past two mornings have been downright too cold to ride without them.

I miss fall. I wish it would come back. Soon.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

2006-10-27T10:43:00.000-05:00

Rest Week

More like a week of sitting around doing nothing. It's raining today, and drizzled for two days before today. This is the time of the year when I get sick easily, so I'm staying out of the cold and wet. So far it's working.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day though, so I'm planning to get a ride in. It'll be nice to spin the legs a bit and expend some energy.

The Trek is due to be back today...from it's third trip to the factory for repainting. I'm hoping they get it right this time. Kenny wants to ride it, and so I'll have to get it built up for him.

It's Not Always About Going Fast

2006-10-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

Contrary to Burl Ives assertion that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, in my book, that distinction belongs to fall. The temperatures begin dropping from the nineties into a more comfortable range in the sixties, seventies and low eighties, and the humidity falls from oppressive at best to merely noticable at worst.

Fall is my favorite time of the year to ride my bike. All of the season's objectives are behind me and it's time to just noodle around and enjoy the season without the pressures of upcoming events forcing me to train a certain way. It's "wind-down" season, and it's time to relax. Time to spend my Saturday rides with Cathy. There's very little I enjoy more than watching her ride to the top of Shades Crest via Smyer for the first time last Saturday. She enjoyed it so much, we're going to try it again this week!

Sure, I've got some goals already set up for next season; I want to finish Cherohala in less than 7 hours, and I'm planning to start swimming and running again this winter in an effort to claim the top spot at a triathlon next Memorial Day weekend. I'm also giving some thought to clipping in for a couple of low key races in early March just to test my fitness and have a little fun (I could use a little humility, and there's nothing like lining up at a race to give it to you).

But those are still months away, and I'm one of the best around when it comes to procrastinating. Sure, I could be busy out on my bike every day, sweating like a soaker hose, and wheezing like a leaky tire...

But then I wouldn't get to enjoy my favorite time of the year, would I?

The Return of TNPT

2006-09-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

Ah, another Tuesday. My first Pain Train in nearly 6 weeks. The big question was would I survive or be spat from the rear before the first stop light?

During the first mile or two, I felt the ache from Saturday's century in Huntsville, but my legs loosened up and despite my best efforts to drop into the middle of the pack, I found myself up front...(there are certain points in this ride where the corners are tricky, and it's best to be up front just for my own comfort and to feel safe)...when I didn't want to be up front.

Never fear though, I know that when the hammer really drops, I'll be suffering somewhere near the back, if not off the back.

We cruised up past the ball fields on Ruffner road and as the pace kept creeping up, I found it just a touch surprising that I wasn't having any difficulty keeping up. I know I've put in a lot of miles recently, but they've been slow, and speed training is something I've lacked considerably of late. I rotated off the front, and though there were about 30 riders, a split of 8 riders had developed, which meant that I was on the front more frequently than normal. I found myself second from last at the foot of the final steep roller on Ruffner, and felt good enough to sprint up to take the top of the hill ahead of the rest. I settled back down and fell in with the group where we worked to the end of Ruffner.

At this point, things settled down for 1/4 mile to allow the dropped riders to rejoin and then we were off to the races again up John Rogers Drive (aka "Dog Track"). Again feeling pretty good, I made one critical mistake and allowed myself to rotate all the way to the back just before the hill began. The reason this is not a good thing is that invariably, somewhere up ahead, a split will occur and if you want to make it over the top with the leaders, you have to work extra hard to bridge to them. Yes, that's what happened. It was the only part of the ride where I thought I might be finished, but I managed to pick my way up through the shelled riders to just regain the leaders as they crested the hill.

From there, the route works over to Old Leeds after what can be an easy climb up 78, but isn't easy because everyone (apparently I'm the lone exception) wants to ride an 18 mph pace up the hill. I managed to hang on. I say "managed", though I never thought I'd get dropped. It just hurt. A lot.

From 78 we cross over I-459 and turn onto Old Leeds Road for the run back through Irondale and Mountain Brook to Homewood. Naturally, the pace is high on this section as well, as various riders (it seems they're always the same ones) feel that they need to attack on one of the busier roads we ride. Anyway, we managed to get through OLR without incident, though I thought a time or two that I might be going down, particularly when one rider decided to sprint from behind me and nearly knocked my handlebars sideways with his leg.

All in all, I was very happy with last night's ride. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could still keep up with the boys and even take my turns working. I clearly didn't expect to be where I was.

Unfortunately, this may be the last TNPT for me...scheduling conflicts abound over the next couple of weeks, and it's getting to be too dark too early for the ride to continue past the middle of October.

I'll have to spend the winter making sure I don't lose too much. I'll be doing a lot of riding with family now that fall is here and the weather is so nice.

I'm looking forward to that.

Down and out

2006-09-18T13:09:00.001-05:00

It's a strange title for what was perhaps my strongest ride in years...but as the story unfolds, you'll understand.

Saturday was the Huntsville Century (yes, that should be the "Huntsville All-you-can-eat Century, but I didn't eat all I could, so I've shortened it for this year). I took Molly up with me on Friday afternoon to play with her cousins while Cathy's brother did an eye exam for me. We stayed with the brother and his family that night.

Early Saturday morning, I left Molly behind to spend more time with kin, and I drove to the other side of Madison County to the High School which served as the start and finish for this ride. Pulling into the parking lot, I saw about 3 cars there, and recongized DirtDog's Scott CR-1 attached to the back of his truck. Already the day was starting out great...I didn't think he was doing the Huntsville with Six Gap just a week away. We chatted for a while and I told him I was looking to do less than 6 hours because 1) I wanted to, and 2) I had to be back in Birmingham (100 miles away) by 3:30 for a meeting. I also mentioned that I'd be leaving a bit early to ride with some friends who were on their way, and to holler when he passed me so I could hook on with this group for the rest of the ride.

Russ and Katie, and their friends Brad and his wife Sue (who flew in from Park City, UT just for this event) arrived, all attired in matching University of Utah jerseys. At least my blue and black kit was somewhat BYU'ish. Now you realize, don't you, that I'm going to have to get a BYU jersey to offset this horde of Utes.

At 7:30 we rolled out of the parking lot and joined a smattering of other riders in the extraodinarily comfortable morning air. And since I mentioned it, I'm just going to say that when the only thing you can find to complain about regarding the weather was that there wasn't enough breeze to give you a tailwind anywhere, then you'd probably just better stop complaining.

Riding past the cotton fields waiting to be harvested, the area was blanketed with white and green. It was almost like snow in some spots (if you ignored the red clay dirt underneath it all). The terrain was much gentler than I remembered from several years ago, the rollers seemed considerably smaller and fewer in number.

Just past the first feed zone, DirtDog and a small group caught up with us. Russ and Brad and I hooked on with them, but after a mile or two, Russ began feeling guilty and convinced Brad to drop back to ride with their wives. DirtDog and his group had left about 10 minutes before the 8am start, and so it was about 15 minutes later when the first large group caught us. Without any difficulty, we raised our pace and joined with the nearly 100 other riders. It was fast and it was fun. We rolled over the rollers at a nice 22-23 mph pace for miles and miles. Nearing the 40 mile rest stop, there is a large downhill, followed immediately by an equally large uphill. I was at the front of the group on the descent, and upon hitting the uphill portion, I shifted to my small ring...but I messed up the shift and dropped the chain. I came to a complete stop as I tried to get things working again, and when I finally got the bike moving forward, I was 75 yard behind the last riders in the group. So I began to chase. And chase. And chased some more.

Descending from Lexie Crossroads into what Jeff Mills and I call, The Valley That Time Forgot, I continued to chase. I could see the group up ahead, about 1/4 mile, but I just couldn't get any closer. And I was on my own in "no man's land" with riders behind and the group I wanted up ahead. Turning onto Marble Hill road, to climb back to the top of the ridge, I decided I was done chasing. Hopefully I would catch some of them at the next rest stop (back at Lexie Crossroads again). This climb, contrary to the rest of the course seeming easier, was more difficult than I remembered. I knew that when Katie saw the hill, she would be cursing me under her breath, and possibly even aloud, and if Russ was nearby, he would probably join her.

Immediately after cresting the climb, I descended down into the valley on the east side of the ridge and turned back south toward Lexie Xroads. Somewhere along this valley I was caught by DirtDog and another small group of riders, some who had been in the large group. We climbed back onto the top of the ridge and arrived at the RS. I asked the folks working that stop if they'd seen a group wearing U of U jerseys. The girl I talked to said they had just left 10-15 minutes before we got there. I left a message apologizing for the hill and we took off for the last 50 miles. As we rode, we picked up more and more stragglers who had experienced ejection from the front runners. By the time we were at 85 miles covered, we had a fairly sizable group formed, but few of them would take pulls, so it was up to just 4 of us to drive the bus. If I might just brag for a moment, I felt good. I took strong hard pulls, and stayed within myself, and didn't blow up.

The last 50 miles of this course are considerably hillier than the first 50, but certainly not unmanagable. And they weren't hurting me the way I expected. I finished the ride, 105 miles, in 5:18. Yeah. I was happy about that. I quickly ran into the showers to get changed and hurry to Bham, but found the line at the showers was going to take a while.

Now, I don't know what kind of High School has but 2 shower stalls (not 2 gang showers mind you, 2 stalls with one head in each), but this one did. And someone forgot to have them turn on the hot water. Which was a blessing, because each of the 40 people ahead of me in line lasted about 90 seconds in the icewater and then it was the next rider's turn.

I'll compress this next bit somewhat...I got dressed in my suit, ate a plate of spaghetti, (not all-I-could-eat, but all I had time for)and pointed the car south. I eventually made it to my meeting, a bit late, but I got most of it.

After the meeting, which lasted a bit over 2 hours, I called Russ' cell phone to jokingly ask if they were done riding yet.

He said they'd finished many hours earlier, when his wife Katie, had crashed descending the same hill where I'd had trouble with my chain. He was a bit ahead of her and waited and waited for 5 mintues or so before another rider asked if he was waiting for a rider wearing a jersey like his. "Yes" he said. "Well, she crashed pretty badly back up the hill". When he got there, I guess it was a mess. She lost control of her bike at 35 mph and hit the metal guardrail. Luckily for her, Russ is a doctor. Anyway, they got her into an ambulance and took her to Winchester, Tennessee, to the hospital where they ran tests for the remainder of the afternoon. Cat scans, MRI's, x-rays. She's pretty beaten up. I've seen dozens of riders who've crashed, and she's the first I've seen with her face all cut up. Skin missing from most of her right arm and right leg, shoulders, backside, etc. And 35 stiches in a gash on the left side of her abdomen. We aren't really sure what caused that gash, but we speculate that it was the end of her handlebar, which had lost its plug during the crash.

I'm guessing that today, she's going to be more sore than she was yesterday. It sure isn't any good when something that's supposed to be fun turns out that way.

So, we'll see how long it takes to get Katie back on a bike. I'm hoping she's okay and it doesn't take much.

Four Fifths of the Birmingham Century

2006-09-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it seems strange to get all set up to do a century, then only plan to do 80 miles of it...but that's exactly what I did. Here's the story:

I've got a couple of friends, Russ, who was at Cherohala with me, and Russ' wife, Katie, who has taken up the fun and frivolity that is cycling, (which if you do it right is roughly akin to breathing as hard as you can while someone beats you with a strand of barbed wire).

Anyway, Russ and Katie have determined (on my recommendation) that the Huntsville "All You Can Eat Century is the perfect event to complete their first century. To that end, once they returned from consecutive trips to the exotic locals of Finland and Sylacauga 3 weeks ago, I've been training with them for the Huntsville event.

Huntsville is not a marathon long event, nor is it especially hilly. What it does have is some of the prettiest countryside I've ever ridden through, and really really sweet smooth roads that were just paved brand new 5 years ago. And rollers. Hundreds of them. Very little of this ride is flat, almost none to my recollection. You're either rolling up, or rolling down. (Sure, there are some flat sections I'm certain, but who remembers those?).

So Russ and Katie (whose longest ride to date had been 65 miles) decided that doing 80 of the BBC Century was just the ticket as a final long ride to the build up to Huntsville. It was a beautiful morning, cloudy and cool, with relatively low humidity for Alabama. We left Montevallo High School about 30 minutes ahead of the start so that we didn't spend all day riding just because they like to start their century late. Leaving town towards the wilds of Chilton County, Katie had her first experience with passing slower riders. A red letter day for her.

As we continued south I noticed that property was being cleared for another soon to be run down, ramshackle self storage facility. Which was nice to see, because you can never have too many of these eyesores in rural Alabama, and south Shelby County doesn't seem to be keeping up with the less affluent counties on its borders. A little farther on, having crossed into Chilton county we encountered a novel way of storing your "stuff". Instead of renting a self storage closet at one of these aforementioned establishments, these ingenious folks had purchased (I assume it wasn't stolen) a school bus, replaced the wheels with cinder blocks, and were storing their "stuff" in the converted school bus. Brilliant!

So back to the ride. This ride is a good approximation of the terrain in Huntsville, lots of rolling hills and mild climbing as well. We saw little traffic because it doesn't seem to be peach season yet, so the roads were all pretty empty. I was a bit ahead of Russ and Katie, so I pulled into the first rest stop and was delighted to find that they had a big box of plums. I love plums, and these plums were absolutely wonderfully sweet black plums. After two plums (plus one in my pocket for later), and a slice of watermelon, we took off again.

5 miles farther down the road, the were finally overtaken by a small group of riders who, having started with the rest of the group, had to have averaged 22 mph to that point. They blew past us and 15 minutes later the first large group (30-40 riders) caught us. I determined that I wouldn't ride with this group, and that I'd wait for Russ and Katie, but as I drifted back, I kept seeing friends and chatting. Besides, the effort staying in with them was noticably less than that of riding on my own. So as the miles flew past, I suddenly remembered that Russ and Katie were back there somewhere, no doubt cursing my abandonment of them. So I dropped off. To my pleasant surprise, R&K were only a couple of hundred yards back, having caught the back of the group and hanging until a longer hill came along. I was impressed.

We stopped at the next rest stop where I returned a pair of new sunglasses to the owner who had dropped them and refilled water bottles before leaving again.

Now, at this point the weather was still very pleasant and we began seeing riders from the previously mentioned group coming back the other way, as they were hitting the metric turn around and going back (most were preparing for the 6 Gap Century in two weeks). Past the metric turnaround, we were on our own again until we stopped and 40 miles out and turned around ourselves. I stayed with R&K for a while but as it got later, I felt like I needed to get back, so I went on ahead. After 30 mintues or so, it started to get hot...the clouds broke up and the sun came out and I actually ended up with a slight sunburn. *shrug*

I finished strongly, averaging 19.3 mph for the last 24 miles, but starting to feel pre-cramping in my calves as I hadn't done anything to prevent cramps because the day seemed so cool at the start. Lesson learned.

My favorite part of the day was a day later (yesterday) when Katie saw me at church and said "that last hill, you know the one I mean...)

Yeah, I knew exactly which one she meant...a longish steep climb with 5 miles to go. It'll kill you at the end of a long ride.

So, 80 miles covered. Lots of energy left to help Cathy clean for a party she was hosting. All in all, a great day.

It might not look like it, but I'm still riding.

2006-09-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been a while since I've had anything to say. I apologize to all 4 of my avid readers.

I've been riding, but nothing epic, nor anything especially profound has happened on any of these rides, so there just hasn't been much to write about.

On Saturday I rode from home down to my old neighborhood and farther south up into Pea Ridge and down to Montevallo. It's a good ride, but I haven't done it for over 18 months. I was surprised by how much has changed along previously isolated areas that are now being cleared for the newest thousand-home-subdivisions. It's kind of sad. Certainly a loss of good riding as these previously deserted roads become the main route to and from home for everyone living in these subdivisions with a car. I'm sure I won't ride down there many more times.

It's kind of sad.

A Change of Plans

2006-08-21T10:38:00.000-05:00

I had made plans to ride into work today, but to go the long way around, which would have given me about 30 miles. It's a nice ride and not difficult. Lots of rollers that let you work hard for 30 seconds, then ease off, then hard again.

Baby girl had other plans for me though when she awoke with a fever and chest cough. Since Cathy was scheduled to sub for an English teacher at Hoover HS today, it became my job to stay home with the sick one.

My wife surprised me though when she said "go ride for an hour and then I'll leave when you get back."

Heck yeah!

I hooked up with Russ and we did a shorter version of the route, it was still about 18 miles, but it was a good 18. Good weather, good roads, good legs.

We'll be trying for the longer route to work again on Wednesday. In the meantime, today's ride was perfect.

Not About Cycling

2006-08-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

Last night we had friends over and during the course of the evening, one of them remarked that she liked to be around me just for all the electronics.

It's not that I have that much stuff. But I really do have a soft spot for electronic toys, and all the stuff you need to go with them.

My Newest Toy

I just received (late last week) a new Apple Macbook Pro 17". Without wanting to gush, can I just tell you that this is the computer I've waited all my life for. A fast Intel processor (2.16 ghz Duo) and 2gb RAM. But the specs aren't why I'm excited, at least not directly. To understand why I'm excited about this machine, I first have to tell you that I am a Macintosh fan. I'd choose a Mac any day over a Dell or a Gateway or other Wintel/AMD box. The hardware is elegant, and the OS is really really nice.

but...
You knew there had to be a "but" in here. I use two software programs (not for work) that are available only for Windows. Additionally, I developed and maintain a database which is cross platform, which means that I need both a mac and a windows machine.

The Solution
My new Macbook Pro is both machines in one. I have used Virtual PC extensively with my old PPC based Powerbook, but it was a kludge, and a slow kludge at that. The new Intel based Mac opens up a whole new world. Using Apple's "Bootcamp" I partitioned a small section of my hard drive and installed Windows XP SP2 on it. Everything that I can throw at it runs just as well as it does on my Dell. Nothing, nothing, fails to work. The speed is amazingly good, because this is not an emulation package...Windows is addressing all the hardware natively (except the Boot ROMs which are emulated, but doesn't effect performance in the slightest). It runs just as fast as the brand new Dell that a coworker just got, both machines are the same spec (2.16 duo/2gb ram, same video etc.). The drawback to this solution is that if I want to switch to Windows, or back to OSX, I have to reboot.

Parallels
Enter Parallels. This software package is more like Virtual PC, except that it doesn't emulate the hardware, it just provides access to it for Windows XP directly, largely bypassing the OSX layer. Just a keyboard command and I can switch back and forth, copy and paste from one to the other, all incredibly fast...especially compared to previous solutions.

Bravo to Apple for switching to Intel. It's what I've been waiting for forever.

My encounter with Bhams Finest

2006-08-15T17:43:00.000-05:00

On my ride home today, the weather was particularly harsh looking, and with guests coming for dinner, I decided to take the shortest way home. Coming up the hill on Greensprings Hwy, I encountered a police car blocking all traffic and sending them back the other direction, on the other side of the road. Several hundred yards farther I could see a bunch of police cars with lights flashing etc. I asked the officer directing traffic if there wasn't any way I could continue up Greensprings, because to go around would add several miles and 25-30 minutes to my ride, and I really wanted to get home before all heck broke loose weather-wise.

The officer told me to go ahead. "You can get through, you're on a bike". So I went around his car and up to the other emergency vehicles in the road. Looking for a way past, I settled on going around the left side of the gaggle of police cruisers. Several officers were standing there and I could see a bicycle, circa 1970 something, all bent up and laying in the road. A car with a broken windshield was also sitting there. Obviously someone had hit a cyclist. (For my non-cycling friends who read this, that is a bad thing).

One of the police officers then offered this opinion: "If I were you", she said to me, "I'd find a sidewalk to ride on and stay off the roads." I was dumbfounded. This is an officer who is supposed to enforce the law, but she doesn't know the law. My response was "I appreciate your concern, but the law requires me to ride on the street, not the sidewalk, and even more, it protects my right to be on the road." Every one of the 5 officers that heard this looked as though it was their opinion that I was an idiot. Whatever.

It would be nice if our police officers, who we rely upon to protect us from the morons who think it's cool to run cyclists off the road, knew more about the laws they are supposed to enforce.

Try again folks

2006-08-08T16:51:00.000-05:00

My Trek came back today. It's the OCLV frame that Postal rode in the 99 tour, with the team graphics. Unfortunately, it was pretty beat up and there were some funny splits in the paint that I felt uncomfortable riding with, so I had it sent in to Trek for a stripdown, x-ray, and repaint.

The bad thing (for me) is that I had to give up a nice paint scheme that I really liked. The good thing is that I like the new standard 5200 scheme (metallic grey with silver and blue highlights), and no one expects you to be fast on a grey bike.

Unfortunately, when we unpacked it, the paint had started to bubble along the top tube. Obviously that isn't acceptable, so it's on its way back to Wisconsin to be stripped and painted again.

My son is itching like crazy to get his hands on this bike, but he may have to wait a while longer.

I'm sorry, I didn't know this was a race...

2006-08-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

The worst of days, was last Saturday. And while not quite the best of days, I certainly had a stronger ride today. The weather was tolerable. In fact, one could say that it was quite nice...mid 80's, low humidity, sunny skies, and a breeze to help keep us cool.

We left the BBC in Irondale and rode out to Odenville and back again. The pace was moderately quick, until we were 4 miles outside of Odenville, when Jeff Haines, and Dom Sutton came flying out of the pack and rolled off the front like we were standing still. Well, color me stupid, but I had no idea we were racing today...nevertheless, my legs responded and with the help of Paul Holsinger, we bridged the gap and dragged the group up with us. Then Jeff ended his pull and dropped back. Instantly, the speed went up 3 mph as Dom hit the front and started killing us. He faded eventually, and things settled down to a reasonable 25-26 for the rest of the way to the turnaround. The nice thing about this whole tale is that even though I thought the pace was tough for a few minutes, I was able to fight through it and hang until it slowed down again.

I finished the ride with 67 miles and actually feel good right now. The legs are a little sore when I go up or down the stairs, but that's a good thing. It means I worked hard and I'll see some benefit from the ride today.

Hurrah! It was just a bad day last week. I'm not the complete lame-o I felt like. And that's a good feeling.

Fitness and P-32

2006-08-02T08:53:00.000-05:00

What do fitness and the radioisotope P-32 have in common? P-32 has a half life of 14.3 days. According to Greg Lemond, fitness also has a half life of 14 days.

I tested this theoretical commonality last night at the weekly TNPT.

Greg is right. He might even have been generous.

First, I haven't ridden but a handful of miles in the past two weeks due to scheduling and family and church and all the little things that conspire to get in the way of effective training. In fact, my last TNPT was the night I got shelled at the end of Ruffner Road by the big boys. Of course, that was my own fault.

Last night started off okay. Pretty good in fact. But you can't take two weeks vacation and hang with this crowd. I was fine down Ruffner and once again, halfway up John Rogers. But then the elastic snapped and I had no ability to turn a gear big enough to keep up. I chased back on just before 78, but slipped off the back again climbing up to Old Leeds, never to return. At least I wasn't alone. There were a bunch of us that had trouble last night. The common comment was about how hot it was. So maybe there are some of us that don't do well when the heat index is at 105.

But then we may have been blessed to have gotten spit out the back, as we came upon a full contigent of emergency vehicles responding the crash of one of our number on Shades Creek Parkway coming out of Mountain Brook.

The moral of this story, if you want to hang with the TNPT, you can't afford to take 2 weeks off. Since I've got classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (one Tuesday on, the next off), I can tell it's going to be tough to keep up. Maybe it's time to look for a slower group for the rest of the year.

An Attempt At Fairness

2006-07-31T21:34:00.000-05:00

to myself.

I spent much time early on in this blog complaining about my weight. So it is with a sense of fair play that I announce, despite an earlier pledge not to mention my weight again (this year, right? that was just for this year. I'm pretty sure) that I have finally broken below the X barrier at which I feel much better about my physical specimenhood (yeah, I just made that word up). In fact, my scale indicated nearly 10 days ago that I had fallen below the magical number (said number being the square root of what Oprah weighs, but that's another story) but I felt like I had to give it some time to make certain it wasn't just water loss, but real and actual weight loss.

I was so excited. I just had to share.

Tomorrow night will be another TNPT. I'm going to show up sporadically now, as I have classes every other Tuesday and Thursday evenings. They're professional development classes that I am choosing to take. But they're going to eat into my Tuesday night hammer-festing. Cest la vie!

I'll post how it goes either tomorrow night or Wednesday.

Worst day of the year

2006-07-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the worst ride of the year for me, bar none. I rode the Tad Beaton Memorial ride, which commemorates the last ride of a local police officer/cyclist, who was felled by heart failure during that ride. Around 200 riders gathered yesterday morning to complete the route that he started two years ago.

It seemed like a worthy event, and I was on my own as friends have other things going on, so I thought, why not? It's a route I like, with a lot of climbing. While the official route is 50 miles in length, a few of my club friends were planning a 120-130 mile ride in preparation for the BBC Double, coming up early in September.

Unfortunately the day started off badly when I forgot my water bottles. No too big of a deal ordinarily, because I could get 25 miles in, and buy a couple of gatorades at the BP in Vandiver. Then reload them on the way back through and finish the ride. But, the day was exceptionally humid. I don't normally sweat heavily, but I had it literally running down my face all morning. The air was heavy, and overcast, and worst of all, I just had no legs.

Oh, I did okay climbing Cahaba Beach Road up to Sicard Hollow, but each climb after that was tougher than the last, until the climb up the steep side of Double Oak Mountain left me completely drained.

Eventually I made it back to the end, but I really didn't have any fun yesterday. Which is distressing because I am asking myself if I've really lost that much fitness, or if I just had a bad day.

I'm hoping it was just a bad day. I'll find out on Tuesday.

Got the Bull By the Horns...

2006-07-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, where I've got him is with his horns planted firmly in my backside tonight.

It was a strange night all around. I was feeling pretty good at the start. You know, the testosterone is flowing, the big boys are all out for the big night. Ron Williams, a 2 time paralympian with 2 silver medals and 3 National Championship jerseys, another rider who was once upon a time an age group World MTB Champion (yeah, that's really cool!).

I knew it was going to hurt, but I didn't care. The smart thing to do would have been to pack up my stuff back into my car and go home...but then I've never been prone to doing the smart thing when it comes to competition. Playing golf, I go straight at the flag tucked into the corner, over water, with a bunker on the short side. In cycling, I go to the front of the big boys and try to throw it down. As usual it backfired.

The "How"

Making the right turn onto Ruffner Road, I slipped up the inside and found myself in the second row, flying up the hill (no mercy for newbies tonight), down the other side and onto the flats and over the small rollers at 33-34 mph. Was I hanging? Yeah, I wasn't doing to badly. Then we got to the final climb on Ruffner, a truly small hill, but steeper than the rest...usually the group slows just a little on this rise, but not tonight, 34 mph we went up that hill. Shortly after that, I was done. Cooked. Unable to do anything other than limp up John Rogers Drive and spin back to my car to go home.

The "Why"
It's been a very unusual week for me since last Tuesday's ride. I've been very out of sorts, my schedule has been wacky and I haven't followed my routine the way I should. As a result of this disruption, I obviously expended during the past week tremendous amounts of liquid, sodium and protein, without replacing them. Leaving me susceptible to dehydration, cramping, and muscle fatigue.

Add in a heat index of 106, and that's just a reciped for disaster. On the other hand, I had an hour to spin along with myself to keep me company, daydreaming and thinking about things. Stuff I haven't done much of lately. It was very pleasant.

The "Fix"
Probably, I need to go back into Aerobic base mode. I've been in Anaerobic mode for about 8 weeks now, and that's enough at once. Jeff would say it's time to put the bike down for a week and cross train, but I'm not going to do that. I'll just try and get back to my routine and I'm sure I'll come around in a week or two.

TNPT Strikes Back...

2006-07-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

...or tried to anyway.

Once again it's time for the recap of the Tuesday night hurt-fest. I was feeling pretty good before the ride started tonight. The previous few rides I had done, along with the past few TNPT's had me feeling pretty confident of my ability to throw it down along with the main protagonists tonight. It turned out to be a night of going deep and long.

Nearing Ruffner Rd, DirtDog came along side me and asked me to go to the front with him to slow the pace a little on the initial climb near the ballfields. Doing this ensures that some of the newer riders don't get shelled on the first climb, and have the descent to work their way up to speed.

Sprinting up to the front, I happened to notice my HR monitor. That can't be right, I thought, as the digits were displaying 182 bpm. That's really high for me, near max HR, and certainly not commesurate with the effort being made. My legs weren't hurting, so I didn't think about it again until later on down Ruffner, I noticed once again that I was running in the high 170's, but felt fine.

On John Rogers Drive, I grabbed a wheel on the steep part of the climb and soon found myself climbing the steeper section at 22mph. With a HR of 189! At this point my legs had started to ache a bit, so I backed off, still with about 100 yards on the main group to recover for the flatter top half of JRD. It worked out fine, and I made it over the top in the front group, but still, HR in the 170's and 180's.

On Old Leeds Road, there were a couple of points at which I had to make a decision as to whether to keep pushing, or to sit up and take it easy. I fought through it and stayed with the group, but going down the descent of Old Leeds, a motorcycle passed the back half of the group (where I was located) then pulled into the middle of us and caused a split that despite chasing as hard as we could, we were unable to pull back.

When I got home, I downloaded the data from my Polar and saw why this ride hurt so badly. I had 21 minutes of riding with my HR above 176 bpm. More than 1/4 of the ride time. Another 12 minutes between 171 and 176. Jeff, you're always telling me to go deep and stay there. I guess I did tonight.

As a side note, I've really noticed how much nervous energy I expend riding in the peleton. A lot of the riders are triathletes who don't know how to ride around other riders, and the group as a whole is very nervous, and at times a scary place to be. I've seen a rider laying in the road with multiple broken bones and a 3" wide stream of blood running from their fractured skull into the gutter, while his wife lay yard away from him also with multiple broken bones, with two other riders scattered about similarly injured. All victims of a rider who decided to push his limits beyond his capabilities. It's so important to become comfortable with riding in a group if you are going to race. I've spent years riding in large groups, and I still get nervous if one rider is twitchy. Then the ride becomes even harder because I'm wasting energy on something I can't control.

Anyway, tonight's ride was good. It hurt, which I'm actually glad about. If it didn't hurt, I guess it would have been a waste of time, but after looking at my HR data, I feel like it was undoubtably the best anaerobic workout I've had all year. I actually feel like I could go race in Huntsville the end of this month and do well, (but I won't because the last time I raced that event, there were 5 crashes, and I have too many responsibilities to get taken out by some less than intelligent person who can't keep his front wheel out of my rear derailleur).

But I'll keep training anyway. There's something really great about being out in the open, pushing yourself and seeing improvement.

That's what it's all about.

Feeling Beastly

2006-07-10T08:53:00.000-05:00

As my friend Jeff, aka "The Beast" occasionally says, "I gotta brag for a minute".

On Saturday, my friend Russ, who I ride quite a bit with, was in Sylacauga attending to an on call rotation that he has there once a month, and so I found myself anticipating the Saturday morning rollout for a ride with the boys and girls from the club. It's been a while since I've done a weekend club ride, and once my sweet wife gave me the go-ahead to join them, I was feeling good.

Unfortunately, my alarm didn't sound loudly enough to wake me up at the right time, so I pulled into the parking lot at 7:30, the appointed leave time for the ride...but luck was on my side, as they were a few minutes behind in getting started, as the group was exceptionally large, probably about 55-60 riders.

This was a day with climbs on the menu, and I was really kind of excited to see how my climbing form would match up with some of these folks. I quickly found out as we reached the bottom of Smyer and I took off. The group had gotten strung out on the flatter roads leading to the climb, and I reached the bottom about 7th or 8th in the group, and 300 yards behind the leader. I easily caught each of the riders ahead of me and continued to work hard the remainder of the climb, setting a new PR by 5 seconds.

Next up the climb up Caldwell Mill road, a bit steeper than Smyer, but just as long. 5th to the top of Caldwell Mill, in the lead group. Then out the half dozen climbs heading east on Sicard Hollow. Again, in the front group all the way to the end of Sicard Hollow/Rex Lake.

After a brief stop to reload water bottles, I had to make a decision. I could head back west on 78 into town and go home, or I could continue on with the group out to Trussville. I've never been on the roads they had planned, but I wanted to try them. Also, I was feeling like I haven't felt in years. The decision was made easier when I remembered that my wife had mentioned she was taking the kids to a program at the library that morning, and I knew I wouldn't be missed for the extra 90 minutes the rest of the ride would take. So my decision was made and I continued on the longer route.

Now, to make a long story short, let's just say that I was feeling good, attacks were flying right and left, and all of them were covered. Never once was I in any danger of needing my iPod to keep me company as I watched the pack disappear into the distance. At one point, I charged up a small power climb, thinking that I was just keeping pace. Looking over my shoulder, the rest of the group was 50 yards behind. Now, normally, this is cause for alarm when I'm on a road I don't know. Why?

Flashback to a story from 15 years ago
It was race night in Provo, and the course that evening was from Springville, out around West Mountain, and back to Springville. Approaching the northest point of West Mountain, I managed to escape the peleton. Surprised that they let me go, I continued working my tail off to build a lead that I could sustain. Did I mention that I'd never ridden this route before? With a good 90 seconds in hand I looked ahead of me as I was riding down the west side of the mountain and saw a climb. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been any bad thing but a) I had just worked like crazy to build a lead, and b) well, there isn't a "b", but in any event, they caught me just over at the top of the climb and while I was able to stay with them the rest of the way that evening, ever since then, I've been very wary when a group lets me go like that..

So, I'm 50 yards clear on a road I don't know, and alarm bells should be going off, but they don't. Instead, I gave it more gas and found that sure enough, there was a climb ahead. That's okay, I replicated the story told above, climbing strongly enough to just get caught at the top of the climb and then staying with the group until John Rogers Drive...the climb that is usually my undoing on the Tuesday Night Pain Train. On the early part of JRD, my legs started to feel twitchy. I guess I was about 5th in the line at that point, and as the climb steepened, my legs decided that they didn't want to slow down with the group, so I shot out of the line and began sprinting up the hill. I had a good head of steam up and had just sat back down to work the rest of the climb up when DirtDog came flying up past me, so it was back to sprinting trying to get his wheel, but I couldn't do it. It was my one failure for the day. It says a lot that I even tried to catch him, because normally, I would have chuckled and settled into my own pace. I have no pride and I usually back off if the pain becomes too intense.

But this was no normal day.

Then, to make a great day even better, when I got home, I found that my wife hadn't in fact made it to the library with the kids, but instead of being miffed that I had been gone longer than I had said I would, she said it didn't matter and was glad that I'd had fun! How great is that?

The moral of this story? Training pays off and every once in a while you feel invincible. And what a great feeling that is!

The Power of Recovery

2006-07-07T12:09:00.000-05:00

As I have thought back over the past 3 months of heavy training and long rides, one thing (that I don't think I've mentioned yet) has become clear with the 20/20 capabilities of hindsight.

That "thing" is the importance of recovery.

At my age (42) I can no longer go hard day after day endlessly. In fact, one or two hard rides a week is all I can muster. But I'm noticing that as I have gotten older, my ability to finish a hard ride and still have energy to work in the yard, or run errands with the wife, or goof around with the kids, has increased. It used to be that the wife would be frustrated because a hard ride meant I was useless for the rest of that day. Not so anymore!

I know what some of you are thinking, "man, that EPO is good stuff". But I'm not doping, except for the occasional foray into sodium phosphate loading (which ought to be illegal). No, my secret is that I make sure I'm taking time to recover properly between hard rides.

So, that's my tip for the day (which would be a profound thing if I was doing something like a "tip of the day" type blog, but I'm not, so it's just today's tip, with no expectation for further tips to follow, though they might anyway at some point.)

Now that you're thoroughly confused.

Catching Up

2006-07-06T07:11:00.000-05:00

Well, it's true that it has been a while since my last article, but you'll forgive me when you know that I've been occupied at a family reunion. Yes, I did bring my survival kit (bicycle, helmet, shoes, and Hammer Gel), so I'm managing to enjoy myself to an unprecedented degree...to start, let me catch y'all up to date:

Tuesday Night Pain Train (06/27): Great ride, super legs...felt great the whole way 'round.

Wednesday night I was playing basketball with the young men from church. Doing my best imitation of Dennis Rodman (rebounding...not kicking cameramen or bad mouthing Mormons) the ball hit my hand and I felt and heard a nasty "POP" in the middle finger of my left hand. One would think that this wouldn't affect my ability to ride. I discovered differently on Friday as I found I use it to shift between my chainrings, put a great deal of pressure/strain on it while climbing out of the saddle, as well as releasing my rear brake closure cam when beginning a climb. I also use this finger in concert with it's brothers to remove and replace a water bottle for hydrating properly. The moral of this story is, be careful playing basketball with Scouts, because cycling involves all body parts, not just the parts you think are obvious.

So, onto the ride report...I just returned from Sevierville, Tennessee, immediately adjacent to Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood) which sits between Sevierville and Gatlinburg (I don't think it's named after Larry or any of his brothers). Gatlinburg is on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The GSMNP is unique in the National Park system because they are not allowed to charge admission. It has something to do with the way the deed was written when the park was created, but I think it probably has more to do with the fact that if they charged the standard $25 per carload to get between tourist traps #1 & #2 (Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg) and tourist trap #3 (Cherokee, NC) that the local economies of all three would suffer because thousands upon thousands of dollars per day would disappear into the dark recesses of the federal machine (on the other hand, perhaps the federal machine would use some of those dollars to install water fountains in the park). Or folks just wouldn't go back and forth, but the net effect would be the same.

Anyway, also unique to the GSMNP is that the second highest point east of the Mississippi river is found within its borders. This peak is Clingman's Dome, and is where I spent last Friday morning remembering why I love to ride my bicycle. I left our vacation home around 7:45am, and found myself whipping through patches of fog as I made my way south along the main road that runs through Sevierville, PF, and Gatlinburg. Once south of Pigeon Forge, the road becomes a divided 4 lane with a nice forest with a creek separating the two halves of the road. As I would many times later on the ride, I found myself wishing I had a camera with me.

I made my way through Gatlinburg, which can best be described as crowded and touristy, but a very charming little tourist trap never the less. Loads of character. And condos. And hotels. And time shares. And fudge shops.

As you leave Gatlinburg, you enter the National Park. I made a stop at the park welcome center to make certain that I was on the correct road, and found no help there as the girl who was impersonating a parks employee claimed she'd never heard of Clingman's Dome. "Hello...this is the biggest attraction in your park lady...get a clue!" Fortunately for me, there was a 3 dimensional model of the park and I was able to find that the road I was on was indeed the one which would deposit me at the highest point in the state of Tennessee.

So I went back outside and resumed riding. At this point, the climbing begins in earnest. (of course, "earnest" is a relative term, there's nothing too steep here) While I'd been gradually ascending for the past 5-6 miles already (at this point I had ~300 feet of climbing in), it is just inside the park boundary that the road really turns up. Now, I don't mean that it's steep, because it's not. I'd guess (without having downloaded my Polar data yet) that it averages 5-6%, with some shorter sections hitting 7-8% as you climb the switchbacks near Newfound Gap. The challenge here is that the climbing lasts for 22 miles. Plus the 5-6 miles outside the park. It's not a tough climb, and you can really move through some sections. There are a couple of tunnels that are a little scary due to the "riding in a dark tube with cars" thing. But this is a heavily shaded road, with lots of wildlife to see and thousands of rhododendron bushes to look at as you climb.

About 3 miles into the climb, I was passed by a caravan of family reunioners (my wife's cousins and uncles) who were driving to Newfound Gap to hike the Appalachian Trail section between that point that the top of Clingman's Dome. I made it my objective at that point to get there ahead of them.

I slowed down near some of the overlooks to check out the scenery. It's always a very cool thing to see the road that you've been riding waaaay off down below you somewhere, and I wasn't disappointed.

At Newfound Gap, you leave the main road and climb for another 7 miles to the observation tower at the highest point on Clingman's Dome. Except for a short 3/4 mile downhill on this part of the road, it's a steady climb from Gatlinburg to the top. It took me a touch over 2 hours to climb to the top, but I was riding into a headwind most of the way to the top. I also was taking time to really look around and enjoy the scenery, which is spectacular.

About 5 minutes after I arrived at the top, as I was searching for a water fountain to replenish my bottles, my wife showed up with a couple of kids and a cousin or two. She had dropped my son off farther down the mountain and he was riding up to meet us. So I kicked around for a while waiting until he arrived. Then we checked out the view from the observation tower, from which you could see Mt. Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi) about 50 miles east. Then we climbed on our bikes and headed down the mountain.

Now, if you've ever ridden in mountain canyons, you know that the temperature of the air in the mountains vs the temperature of the air in the valleys affects the direction the breeze is blowing. Remember I had said that I had a bit of a headwind for the climb. I wish I could say that it was a tailwind for the descent, but it was not. We had a headwind for the entire way back down the mountain, and still we managed to run at 35-40 mph the whole way. Despite the wind, it was a fun descent.

It was 43 miles from our lodging to the top of Clingman Dome. The first 20 miles of that was nearly flat, with only 300' of climbing. The next 20 miles climbs an additional ~5200 feet.

I'm already looking forward to my next chance to ride it.

The Best Riding Tunes

2006-06-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

Ah the iPod. It has literally changed my training by turning those days that I dread into days that aren't so bad because I have some tunes in a tiny (iPod Nano) package, and lots of them. The larger iPods are too big for me to carry comfortably, I don't like to ride with my pockets stuffed, so my 60gb Video iPod is relegated to trips and the car, and non riding activities, like a spinning bike at the gym, where I like to watch the last 7 years of the Tour while I work out.

Anyway...this post is about my favorite riding music, not the players.

Riding music, for me, is categorized by what kind of riding I'm doing. Slow, easy tunes for slow, easy days, upbeat stuff for intervals...you get the idea. But probably the easiest category for me is climbing tunes. You know, the ones that get you in a rythm, and numb your brain so you don't notice the effort.

So, in the category of Climbing Tunes I nominate the following as all-time-greats: (note: lyrics are meaningless in this category...these are tunes that are solely for getting you up the mountain)

The Zoo, circa 1979/80 from the Scorpions Animal Magnetism album. This song simply puts down a heavy, steady, cut time beat that just makes you want to keep your cadence in time with it.

Moving In Stereo/All Mixed Up, The Cars, from the 1978 album The Cars. Another heavy steady beat. This one always feels like it's on the verge of cutting loose and running away. The tension between the actual beat and what it wants to do, keeps me driving hard on the climbs.

El Verano, Pablo Cruise's final song on side B of A Place In The Sun. No lyrics here, just an instrumental with lots of energy, and an interesting melody.

Beast Of Burden and Miss You, both classics from the Stones' Some Girls album from 1978. No more needs to be said.

The Show Must Go On. This Queen ode to perserverance is perfect for that climb that lets you pour on a little extra power.

Finally, Do You Feel Like We Do?. The live version, from 1976's Frampton Comes Alive. Sure the song is about alchohol, drugs and other "things", but I already said that lyrics don't matter. It's all about the song getting you to the top of the hill, and not many do it better than this one for me. Especially the steep climbs where the slightly slower beat helps keep the legs turning. It's also perfectly suited to alternating between seated and standing climbing.

Next up, the best Interval Songs, otherwise known as "songs to keep you alive while you're killing yourself".

A story about The Beast

2006-06-21T15:44:00.000-05:00

I mentioned several posts ago that I would tell a story about Jeff that I love. So I decided I've got a few minutes to write it up and get it out here so that he can gripe when he sees it...

Several years ago, Jeff was into Mountain Bike Racing. He convinced several of his buddies (I was not one of them...This story comes to me via one of the victims) to enter a local race.

They lined them up at the start, 5 across. About 50 yards ahead of the start line, the course narrowed to a single track (only room for one rider at a time). Jeff's brain went into overdrive as he tried to figure out a way to make certain that he would get to the chute ahead of said buddies.

When the gun sounded, Jeff reached over, shoved gently on one buddy's shoulder, and knocked over the whole row like dominos, then took off, beating them to the hole.

I love that story. I don't know if it's because I believe it so aptly describes his ultra-competitive personality, or just that he gets so bent whenever I tell it.

Either way, it always makes me smile to think about it.

Don't Let It Get Away

2006-06-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

Yeah, last night was the Tuesday night ride. I didn't do it.

Well, that's not entirely true. I did part of it. As I was riding, my hamstring started to feel a little sore. In an of itself, I'd probably have done the stupid thing and ridden through it, but, lightning and thunder were starting to increase in intensity around us, and I thought, "ahh, I'm just going to bag it for tonight". So I rode back to my car at the bike shop and went home.

Cherohala wore me out I guess, because on my ride into work this morning I wasn't feeling particularly frisky. I rode well, but just not feeling like I could go deep if I needed to.

I think I'll make this week a recovery week and take it easy...

I'm not sure what's up next. Kenny wants to compete in the Mountain Lakes Triathlon in August, and I've done that the past two years, so maybe I'll start back in the pool and running a little bit. On the other hand, those two activities don't sound so exciting to me. The BBC Century and the Huntville All-You-Can-Eat Century are on consecutive weekends in September. I'll probably do the Hunstville...I'm still undecided about the BBC...I'm not too wild about the course they are using now.

Oh well. I've got time to maintain fitness and decide what I'm going to do next. I just have to remember not to quit riding for 6 weeks like I did last year after Cherohala. I'm in pretty good shape right now...I don't want to let that get away from me.

Cherohala Report

2006-06-19T17:17:00.000-05:00

What a great weekend!! On Friday, Cathy, Kenny, our friend Christopher (as opposed to our son Christopher) piled into the car and drove to Tennessee for the ride I've been anticipating for the past 6 months with alternating bouts of angst and excitement.

I watched the weather carefully and was thrilled to see that the forecast from 10 days out was holding and there was no rain expected on Friday, nor Saturday. The heat however was another story, that I'll get to in a few minutes.

Mea Culpa
First, I have to apologize to the residents of Tellico Plains, TN (all 6 of you) for insinuating that there's nothing to your town...this was the first time I spent any time at all actually in Tellico Plains aside from the ride start and finish, and I was surprised to find that over in a little hollow, behind some trees there are several blocks of an actual town.

Friday in Tennessee
We arrived and checked into our cabins Friday afternoon, then left to go to the reception area where the ride organizers had set up to hand out ride packets (water bottle, t-shirt, ride number, and prophetically, Bullfrog Sunscreen, along with some other swag such as stickers and tea). Not knowing exactly what to expect from the food part of this soiree, we were happy to find fruits and several types of bread, along with some dips. On the downside, if we had eaten enough to satisfy our appetites, there wouldn't have been enough left for any of the other 350 people showing up that evening. Luckily, we discovered an old (and I mean old) house that had been converted into a Pizzaria, where we had an absolutely delicious and enormous calzone. By this time Russ and his wife Katie had arrived and were having dinner with us, when Russ spotted a bottle of hot sauce for sale...he decided that this hot sauce was worthy of purchase because according to the label, this hot sauce was "Scorned Woman" I guess in order of sauce heat, you would go mild, medium, hot, nuclear, Scorned Woman.

The cabins were comfortable, and it was no fault of anyone but myself that I was awake at 3:30 a.m. and unable to fall back asleep. Mostly at this point it was angst, wishing I had put in more miles, more climbing and more speedwork. The usual second guessing that I'm prone to engage in, no matter how well prepared I am. Two previous rides of miserable agony had preconditioned me for what to expect.

When my iPod finally started playing Matchbox Twenty's Push at 5:30 a.m., it was still dark outside, but I was ready to go anyway. I took a few minutes to put some last minute flat repair kits together for Cathy and Kenny (who were also riding, albeit shorter distances). Russ and I loaded the bikes onto the cars and we all headed off to the Tellico Plains High School for the ride start.

The Details
Kenny and Christopher headed off 30 minutes ahead of the main pack to get as many mile in during the cool morning as possible. Russ and I
hooked up with Jeff Mills (who drove in from Tulsa, OK), Doug Daughetee, Dom Sutton, and Dan Watson from Birmingham and left with the other ~400 riders who showed up. (Cathy and Katie waited until the main group had gone, then left behind us to avoid the stress of riding in such a large group).

Now, the way this ride works is pretty similar each year. For the first two miles smaller groups form as riders settle into their pace and gel into groups of similarly minded riders, pace-wise. Then to further seperate the faster riders from those looking to just survive, the first uphill begins. It's not horribly long (1/2 mile), nor is it terribly steep (6-7%), but it does its job very well. It was on this hill that I made a grave tactical error...I went to the front of the group and hammered up this hill like it wasn't there. Cresting the top of the hill I looked back and saw Jeff Mills pounding up the hill after me and I realized my folly. I looked for Russ to apologize for the price we were about to pay for my stupidity (riding in front of Jeff), but he was dropped.

To his credit, he eventually chased back on, but by that time, I had abandoned the Jeff Mills/Dom Sutton/Doug Daughetee group and drifted back to the Dan Watson led peleton where Russ was just catching back on.

One thing I noticed is that the first 20 miles of this ride are 1) incredibly beautiful,
and 2)ridden at a very fast pace that doesn't feel like an effort at all. According to my HR monitor, the first 20 miles has nearly 1000 feet of climbing, but I rarely even noticed the uphill sections.

Arriving at the first rest stop, we saw Kenny and Christopher leaving, and the Mills/Daughetee/Sutton group pulled out about 2 mintues behind them. I looked around and didn't see Russ anywhere, and thought he had been finally well and truly dropped. When he rolled in a minute later, he explained that his chain had been dropped shifting on the last climb up to the stop.

We left 5 minutes later and after a few miles through the lakeside hills, we dropped down to the road that follows Lake Chilhowee up to Tabcat Creek, where the Tail of The Dragon begins. As we crossed the bridge over Tabcat Creek, I decided to push myself a bit (as it had been a pretty easy ride to that point), and cleared the 11 miles and 318 curves in 50 minutes (all but 2.5 of those 11 miles are climbing, the picture at the top of this article is of Kenny climbing in the T.o.t.D., showing both road curvature and slope).

After Rest Stop #2, which is at the top of the T.o.t.D., and straddles the Tennesee/North Carolina border, Cathy and Katie and Kenny and Christopher (Russ and I had ridden with them along the lake, but they fell behind on the first of the climbs) caught up to me as I was reloading water bottles. From here the road drops at a 12% grade for 3 miles and delivers you at the foot of the dam where Harrison Ford jumped in The Fugitive. Here the headwinds began and I was pretty much on my own at this point, with Russ feeling the full wrath of the Dragon through the 7 miles up Tapoco Canyon to the 3rd rest stop.

Leaving the stop, I crossed the road and entered the Joyce Kilmer Forest, winding my way along the shores of Lake Santeetlah, past Rattlesnake Ford campground (yeah, I'll be camping anywhere with the name "rattlesnake" in it..uh huh) and began the real climbing at mile 69. For the next 5.5 miles, I learned new lessons in pain and agony, with the temperature reaching 98 degrees, no shade at all, and several long sections of 9% grade. I ran out of water a mile from the rest stop at the 75 mile point, and when I finally dragged my carcass up there, I was dissappointed to find that they were out of ice, and had been long enough for the water to be warm. Cathy and Katie were waiting at this stop for me, and Kenny and Christopher were in the car as well. Russ was nowhere in sight, but I figured he'd do the smart thing and climb into a SAG truck for a ride to the top of the hill.

I struck out to finish the next 8 miles of climbing that would take me to the top of the Cherohala Skyway.

This part of the climb isn't as severe as the first 5 miles, but still reaches 8% for the final mile of the section. Luckily for me, some clouds moved in and the temperature dropped considerably. About 3 miles from the top I saw a SAG truck drive past with Russ' bike on the rack. A minute later, Cathy drove up behind me and Russ was in the van, having managed somehow to make it to the rest stop at 75 miles. That was impressive to me because I know how badly he was hurting before, and I know how badly the climb hurt me in the heat. I don't know how he did it, but he did.

At the top, I stopped quickly for a water bottle reload, Cathy wanted a picture or two, and then started the real fun...the last 32 miles, most of it downhill. The exctptions to that being about a dozen .5-1.2 mile long climbs strewn about down the mountain. The steepest of these is 8.1% and 3/4 mile long. The longest is 1.2 miles and is 5%. Naturally, each of these dozen climbs comes after a significant downhill section, so my legs where good and cold and those climbs felt like a kick in the teeth. Ouch!!

At the last rest stop, Kenny, Christopher and Russ decided they wanted in on the fun, so they joined me for the last 18 miles of the ride back into Tellico Plains.

Summing up
I finished the 115 miles in 7:34:00. That's nearly an hour faster than last year (I did it with a seperated shoulder and had to walk the steepest pitches) and 2003 (nasty cramping at mile 65 slowed me down badly on the climb). I felt really good on the climbing sections, rarely using my bail out 27 cog, and relying primarily on my 23 and 21 to keep my cadence comfortable (I like to pedal a little slower than Lance).

I was frustrated with my inattention to detail as I had filled several ziploc bags with Orange Heed, and several others with Blue Raspberry Accelerade. both powders are white and when I selected my bags for my pockets before the ride, I thought I had grabbed 3 of each. In reality I had taken 5 Accelerade and 1 Heed. I like variety with my hydration and at this point, if I never drink Raspberry Accelerade again, I'll be just fine.

My preparation turned out to be just fine. I actually lost time and left the group I was riding with when we came upon Kenny and Christopher riding along Lake Chilhowee. We dropped out of the group and rode with them, tacking 10 minutes onto my time for that leg compared to previous years. I also lost some time (7 minutes comparatively) in Tapoco Canyon, as the headwinds battered me about and I didn't have the shelter of a group this year to keep me fresh and the speed up. Again, my climbing felt great, though it hurt badly. As Greg Lemond once said, "it never hurts any less, you just go faster."

Cathy rode 10 miles (I am really careful not to overload her and make her hate riding, and that 10 miles was really hilly). It turns out she could have done more, but I played it safe.

Katie made the full 27 miles to the first rest stop. WOW! I'm impressed. She wasn't to thrilled with the 2 final climbs along the way, but hey, you take what the road gives you.

Kenny and Christopher had a goal of riding 50 miles to earn their Cycling merit badges. They rode 75. Kenny hasn't touched his bike in 4 months, so I thought his accomplishment was something of which he should be proud (though I wish he'd prepare better next time, he could be really really fast if he just put in the miles). Christopher did his mileage and was a horse at the end, pounding his fist on the table and dictating the pace through the final canyon, into another headwind that we never felt.

Russ made the first 75 miles, then did 18 more for a 93 total. Not bad at all, especially when he has a total of 700 miles on his bike this year, and hadn't ridden a single mile since our 80 miler two weeks ago.

As for me, I did better than just survive. I felt strong the whole way and only when the excessive heat on the early slopes of the Skyway did its best to demoralize me, did I wonder if I might not make it all the way.

The Cherohala Travelogue

2006-06-09T13:42:00.000-05:00

On June 16, my wife, son, son's friend, and Russ and his wife will be traveling to the thriving rural hole in the road that is Tellico Plains, Tennessee. In reality, there is little more in this town than a high school, and a welcome center for the Cherohala Skyway and the campgrounds in the area. There is a gas station that sells pizza, but other than that, I have yet to see a restaurant of any kind within 15 miles of Tellico Plains.

Think "middle of nowhere" and you're still thinking too big.

On the other hand, one of the best bicycle events you can find in the eastern US begins at the Tellico Plains High School on Saturday morning, the Cherohala Challenge. I've done this ride twice previously, 2003, when I was prepared (somewhat), and 2005, when I was anything but ready.

This is a very scenic ride, and I've had a request to post some pictures that I had from the years I've done it, so...

From 2003, I'm third row, middle, red/white/green helmet...

2005, for 10 miles, the road leading to the foot of the Tail of the Dragon follows Lake Chillhowee. It's the flattest road anywhere, and the only flat road on this ride. This day the lake had a layer of "smoke" covering it, that on occasion you could see something tall sticking up through the clouds. It was really a cool thing to see.

From 2003, an overlook on the Dragon's Tail, looking back down the road.

From the same overlook, looking west at Calderwood Dam.

Again, the same overlook, Lake Calderwood to the east...

On the Skyway, my friend DirtDog (Dan) arrives at the rest stop halfway up the climb. Gradient is impossible to tell from a photograph, but the mile leading up to this rest stop never drops below 9%.

In 2003, leaving the rest stop mentioned above, and continuing to the RS at the top of the climb, a thunderstorm moved in when I was about 2 miles short of the summit. Rain, cold, lightning and wind all made those two miles very adventurous. When it cleared out, I continued down the hill and finished the ride.

So, having said all of this, the question is, why do we do these things? Is it because the more miserable the conditions and terrain, the better the stories are at the Cracker Barrel on the way home? Is it because as a cyclist, you have sworn an oath to punish yourself at every opportunity? My wife would be the first to tell you that none of this appeals to her in any way...not only that, how anyone could even begin to think it sounds fun is beyond her ability to understand. Yet thousands of cyclists beat themselves for hours at a time, in all kinds of conditions, all summer long, in events all over the world.

An old friend, from years ago, who was the first to get me interested in "cycling" as an organized activity summed it up best for me...When asked "why do you ride?", his answer was simple...

"...because it feels so good when you stop."

Amen.

One Step Forward...well, you know the rest

2006-06-07T10:56:00.000-05:00

Once again, it's Wednesday, and that means it's time for a TNPT report. It started off pretty well, I felt strong. Ruffner was a 23 mph festival of 170+ heartrate (for 11 minutes), but I was at the front and was never in danger of being dropped.

Sadly, I can't say the same for John Rogers Drive (also known as "Dog Track"). I made the mistake of sprinting up to the stoplight just before the incline drops, and suddenly, I was right back where I was a few weeks ago, calling to the engine room for more power and coming up empty.

On a positive note, I rejoined the group at Karl Daly and Old Leeds Road, then finished strongly, even finishing 3rd in the sprint to the top of Old Leeds. But oh how the legs hurt!!

This week is a recovery week, and so I'm going to take it easy, do some light spinning and a couple of easy 30 milers to finish out the week.

I'm starting to like the Tarmac, but aside from the stiffness of the frame, (which at my age is debatable as to its "advantage"), the thing I really like is that I've yet to finish a ride of any length with a sore back. On my old Trek, any ride longer than 20 miles guaranteed that I'd have lower back soreness during the ride. It's all about position, and I'm just about sold on the concept of the compact geometry.

Now if I could just find a seat wide enough for my backside...

Once again...but slower this time

2006-06-05T14:30:00.000-05:00

You know how it is. You come back from a ride that has kicked you all over the asphalt and left you for dead, and immediately begin planning a strategy for fairing better the next time. Well, maybe not "immediately", but as soon as the pain begins to fade.

Such was the case this past week, as I contemplated the fun I could have dishing out the pain to my riding partner, Russ, by dragging him around the Winnetaska loop that The Beast and I rode on Memorial Day. In fact, such was my desire to dish out a spanking that I didn't even climb on the bike after Tuesday, because I wanted my legs to be fresh.

Okay, I know, I really wasn't motivated by dishing out a lot of hurt, but I was motivated by wanting to feel stronger throughout the ride the second time around.

Friday night, the storms rolled in, and Russ and I spoke on the phone. Knowing that we would use bad weather as an excuse to skip riding in the morning, I checked weather.com to be certain that we would in fact, be riding in the dry.

I beat back my early morning self, hoping that his battle at Russ' would be just as fruitless, and managed to climb from bed and onto the bike.

Sure enough, only a few minutes past the appointed time, Russ appeared out of the early morning mist (or was that humidity?) for his first ride in 2 weeks.

The morning was beautiful, and cool. As we rode, we talked about all kinds of things, and I did my best to scare him about the upcoming Cherohala Challenge, two weeks from then. Another rider rolled along with us for about 10 miles then went a shorter way. I thought it was kind of sad to waste such a beautiful morning by only doing a short ride.

We rode out through Irondale, then down Cemetery Hill, up and over Jerry Springer Hill, then through beautiful downtown Leeds, Alabama, boyhood home to Charles Barkley. Note to Chuck...take a little of your cash home and spend it. Past Leeds and out around the northeast end of Karr, and Double Oak Mountains. Southwest to Sterret, then north to Vandiver where my empty stomach was making certain that I wasn't going to pass Watson's Grocery (nothing but a BP station with a drink cooler, but you've got to love how imaginative country folk can be when naming things) without stopping for a quick shot of chocolate milk and a refill for the water bottles.

After climbing back over Double Oak Mountain, then Coosa Mountain, I introduced Russ to Belmont. Easily the toughest hill he's climbed to date. It's just over a mile long, but has extended sections at 8% and more. Part way up Belmont, Russ announced that he'd had a spiritual epiphone, and now knew for a fact what Hell is.

Wow, this is rambling...anyway, back down Old Leeds Road, through Mountain Brook, up Smyer and across Shades Crest back to home. 83 miles in 5:15 of riding time. 6 hours when you count all the times we stopped because Russ (a pediatrician) was on call this weekend and his pager kept going off.

But the whole point of this story is that we went slower than I did with Jeff on Monday, but not a lot. Just 1 mph average. But the difference in how my legs felt, and the energy I had at the end of the ride was remarkable. I felt like I could easily have done the whole ride again. Was it the slower pace? Or was it that I had done the distance once already that week? I'm guessing pace, because if anything, having done it already would have had a tiring effect.

Having just finished my biggest week (mileage wise) in several years, at 197 miles, I feel great! My big ride is coming up in less than two weeks, and I think I'm finally ready. I'll taper some this week, keep the rides shorter, but at higher intensity, and then do the same to a greater degree next week.

It's gonna be fun.

The Day After...

2006-05-31T10:57:00.000-05:00

Early yesterday morning, I woke up with my legs feeling all kinds of ache from Monday's long, hot, slog through the late spring humidity of Birmingham, and decided that I would forego the Tuesday night Pain Train.

At some point during the day however, my legs started to feel less pain, and I thought it might be a good idea to test them out by changing my mind. So I went home, climbed on my bike and rode like crazy to get to the start in time to join the folks who, I learned later, knowing that they had TNPT coming, had the good sense to stay inside their air conditioned homes (and trailers...this is the south) on Monday Or in the case of a few, if they ventured out, only spent a couple of hours in the saddle (instead of 4:40).

As you can imagine this makes the score;

Smart People: 1
Stupid Person (Me): 0

before we even left the parking lot. Sure as a cowpoke chases a chuckwagon, as soon as the first hill (a small one, mind you) came along, my legs had a quick meeting and decided to stage a coup d' etat. I decided that the best way to quell the rebellion was to assure them that the pain would be temporary, so I hurried to the front of the pack as quickly as I could go, and promptly slowed the pace down to a reasonably less punishing tempo. Unfortunately, this could only last as long as I could bluff the group into thinking that I had their best interests at heart, but I managed admirably for a couple of miles. Finally I was unceremoniously booted from the head of the peleton by means of the peleton winding it up and spitting me out the back like a chewed sunflower seed husk.

So I meandered my way up to Old Leeds Road and went home, via Smyer and Shades Crest. Still, a small victory could be found in the very act of getting mounted up and trying to ride...a year ago I would have taken week off to recover from Monday's ride.

That reminds me of my favorite story about the Beast, but I'll have to save it for another day.

Where's that cool weather?

2006-05-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

6:00 this morning, Jeff Mills, (aka "the Beast") and I mounted up and headed out. We decided to go east, out to Winnetaska, then Vandiver and back. It started out okay, I'm still getting used to the Tarmac (3rd ride on it, by far the longest), and I'm feeling a little scrunched up on the bike, compared to the La-Z-Boy position I enjoyed for 6 years on my Trek, nice and stretched out. So I've got muscles hurting that I've never really had a need to use before now. I'm sure that'll all work out as I make the finer adjustments to my position on the bike though.

The Winnetaska ride has 6300 feet of climbing in 80 miles, nearly all of that after mile 40 (which is nearly exactly what Cherohala does), though it rolls pretty hard for the first 40 as well. The major climbs (in Birmingham that means more than 1 mile long, and around 6-8%) are Vandiver South, Dunavant, Zeigler, Grants Mill, Belmont, and Smyer.

As we were nearing the top of Belmont, where it ends into Old Leeds road, we saw a couple of riders heading the direction we would be going. By the time we got to the top, they were a quarter mile ahead, but Jeff was intent on catching them, so off we went, 24, 25, 26 mph chasing as though our lives depended on it. When we did catch them, they said they knew we were coming and tried to hold us off, but couldn't do it. I was just happy that with 65 mile and several thousand feet of climbing in my legs, I was able to suck Jeff's wheel at those speeds.

So we finished strongly, but it was HOT. I mean, at 9:00 my computer said it was 92 degrees. I drank 5 full water bottles (24oz each) and still weighed 3 pounds less than when I started.

All in all, a good ride. Nothing profound to say, just had a good hard ride. I was happy with my effort and my results.

The Test

2006-05-28T15:49:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow will be the big test prior to Cherohala. And I'm a little bit nervous. The Beast is in town for a friend's event and we'll be riding in the morning. We haven't decided yet whether we'll ride out to West Blocton, or east, out to Camp Winnetaska. Either way, there's loads of climbing in the 80 miles we'll cover. But surprisingly, it isn't the climbing that has me worried. It's the distance and the heat. A few weeks ago, I was complaining about how cold it was. Well, the climate is taking its revenge, and the temps are in the 90's now. Toss in the fact that my longest ride of the year thus far was 65 miles, and that was a month ago, and I'm afraid I'm going to be dying tomorrow.

On the other hand, I've got to get a long ride under my belt. Cherohala is 115 miles and 9-10K feet of climbing. I've been putting in large miles over the course of the weeks, but not very many long rides. Time just doesn't permit me to spend 5-6 hours every Saturday on my bicycle, as much as I'd love to.

Some of my friends in the club have trouble understanding how you can justify not riding a century every weekend, and 50 mile rides a couple times during the week. Of course, they don't have kids, or church responsibilities, or (in the case of a couple) jobs.

So, one way or the other, I'll be back tomorrow night (after I paint the living room, after my ride) and let y'all know how it went.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

2006-05-24T22:18:00.000-05:00

In this month's issue of Bicycling Magazine (yeah, yeah, I know) they had an article listing the favorite hometown rides of several American pros, Chris Horner, Levi Liephiemer, David Zabriskie, George Hincapie and Floyd Landis (I've ridden Horner's, Landis' and Zabriskie's favorites, I think that's cool). That got me to thinking, what is my favorite ride?

There's no easy answer. It depends largely on where I am, and what I feel like doing, but one thing all my favorite rides have in common is climbing. Not that I'm a great climber after 18 years of marriage, but it's hard to imagine a great ride without any climbing.

The Alpine Loop, with a trip up Squaw Peak is probably my all time favorite, but I live 1800 miles from there, so I get to ride it at most, once or twice every couple of years. The trip up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Guardsman Pass and back down is a lot of fun, and Floyd Landis' favorite, Palomar Mountain (in the San Diego area), is near the top of my list as well. Another thing these rides have in common is that the climbs are all twisty and turny. Lots of hairpins, and switchbacks to break up the monotony. That may be one reason why I like the Tail of the Dragon and the Cherohala Skyway so much.

In this area though, long climbs are rare. The longest around that is uninterrupted is the 3 mile climb to the top of Mt. Cheaha, 100 miles from my home. Most of our climbs are 1-2 miles in length, but are steeper than those out west, so they're not quite as much fun. Smyer twists and turns its way up Shades Mountain for nearly 2 miles, and is probably my favorite hill in Birmingham, just for the forested 1930's feel of the moss covered rock walls that line the road, and the trees overhanging the road to create a tunnel of shade the whole way up.

In short, the best rides usually have great climbs somewhere on the route. Cathy struggles to understand this philosophy, but hills are challenges, and there's satisfaction in getting over that challenge.

As much complaining as 90% of the people on bikes do about climbing hills, riding without hills would be boring. And we all know it.

This is my resolution to stop complaining when my ride partner says (after climbing to the top of the Alpine Loop, and descending) "hey, that was a lot of fun, let's do it again". And again, and again, and again...

Painful workouts = great workouts! Usually.

2006-05-23T23:41:00.000-05:00

Another Tuesday, another night of excruciating pain! This week though, I felt my hard miles of the past 8 weeks come through for me, as I revved my HR up into the 182-183 range for the first time in a while. Several riders in the group did Mt. Mitchell on Saturday, but it didn't seem to slow them down at all tonight.

All told, 6 and a half minutes in zone 5c (fully anaerobic, max effort and HR), 11 minutes in 5b, 14 minutes in 5a, and 30 minutes at LTHR. All in all, it was a great workout. After putting in the base miles, it's easy to see why those easy miles are so important. A few weeks ago, I was gasping and wheezing to stay on over the top of the relatively easy John Rogers Drive, getting gapped in fact, but the HR wouldn't climb to match the effort. Tonight, it was a tough effort, but the HR went right up into the red zone and I still had power coming from the engine room. It was a good feeling.

For 2 months now, I've been laying the foundation, now I'm working on speed. I even decided to ride Lakeshore with the group (usually I turn off and go back a different way because Lakeshore=bedlam), sprinting from stoplight to stoplight, hitting 30-32 mph, then holding the wheel in front of you for all you're worth until the next light forces the pace down momentarily, then sprint like crazy to get the speed back up. It's not a lot of fun, but I felt like I needed to do it this week. Average speed at the end of the ride...20.1 mph, including the 15 minutes of warm-up and 10 of cool-down.

And have you ever noticed how, early in a ride, there's always a point at which it becomes extraordinarily painful to maintain the pace, usually a hill, or an acceleration, that forces a decision...ride through the pain, knowing that your legs will loosen up and it'll be okay, or take it easy, slide out the back of the group and feel like a wimp.

But at least your legs don't hurt. Right?

Recovery week, or just lazy?

2006-05-16T22:05:00.000-05:00

So this week is supposed to be a recovery week in my periodized training program. Despite this, I decided to show up for the Tuesday night Pain Train. 15 minutes into the ride, it started to sprinkle a little bit, I looked where we were headed and the skies were black. Recalling the soggy lightning "enhanced" ride from last week, I quickly decided to stick to my training plan and turned for home, taking it easy except for the climb up Smyer where I gave a good effort. I still got 25 miles in today, so it wasn't a complete loss.

It was a good day. I enjoyed my riding today, and when it's all said and done, isn't that what really counts?

I mean, if you're not going to enjoy the pain as much as the easy rides, why bother?

It Must Be Working

2006-05-15T23:03:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, at a family dinner honoring one of my sisters-in-law, another of Cathy's sisters announced that I was looking "skinny". Yet another sister informed her that guys don't like to be told they're skinny, so she changed her statement to let me know that she thought I looked "hot".

Heh. If only the sister I am married to felt the same way, I'd be golden.

Anyway, despite what my scale says, apparently my all important (for a cyclist) strength to weight ratio is improving. I still sport a 12 pack (rather than a 6), but it's nice to know that things are looking better.

So I'm officially done talking about my winter weight gain and inability to get rid of it.

Kenny and I signed up for Cherohala this evening. It's going to be a lot of fun to have him there. Cathy is also planning to ride some of the route...at least, I'm planning for her to ride, she's skeptical. But we'll put some miles into her legs before then. And besides, she was pretty skeptical about doing the triathlon last spring, but she did just fine, and even managed to have fun.

And yet more rain...

2006-05-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

After two sunny, but very windy days, the rain showed up again an hour into my planned 3 hour ride this morning.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was windy, and cold as well. Those things all add up to one very chilly cyclist. Still, I managed to make it to just 10 minutes short of 3 hours, so I won't complain. But boy, the hot shower when I got home sure felt great!

After a boatload of miles this week, I'm really looking forward to a recovery week next week.

Can Carly Simon make you a better cyclist?

2006-05-12T11:04:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was starting out on a ride, and being late to meet my riding partner, I was riding hard up the hill away from my house. The climb is only a mile long but steep enough to be painful, especially when you have 0 minutes of warm-up time to prepare for said climb. Just about the time that I was thinking about how I needed to slow down because it hurt too badly, the shuffle songs function on my iPod decided to throw Carly Simon's I Haven't Got Time For The Pain through the headphones. I had a good chuckle and realized that she was right. I had left things too late before actually climbing on the bike and now I had to pay the price.

I remembered this because today, the same song came on during my morning commute, on a different hill, one I normally just spin up and take it easy on in the mornings. Inspired by the song, I decided to give it a little extra gas today. I felt strong. I was climbing almost like the old days when I didn't have 18 years of marriage under my belt ("under my belt" being the operative phrase here, as 18 years of marriage is literally showing on my waistline). I noticed this same thing on my ride home last night...my climbing is improving. I still don't have the uphill vertical velocity that I'd like to have, (does anybody?) though my downhill vertical velocity is nearly unbeatable. Still, I'm feeling good on the climbs. I'm not tiring out like I was a month ago. In fact, last week I set a PR on Smyer of 7:06 (1.5 mi @ 5-6%). I can get into a rhythm and feel like I can stay there for hours. That's a good thing, because at Cherohala, I'll be doing exactly that.

Unless I have to get off my bike and push it.

Maybe I need to put a few more Carly Simon songs on the iPod.

So far, so inconsistent

2006-05-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

Another rainy day yesteday. In fact, I think it was darker at noon than I've seen it at night lately. So no mileage yesterday. In fact, I forgot my card to get in the Rec center and had to skip working out altogether.

On a positive note, my mileage compared to last is a greater by 164% to date. The flip side of this is that I did so few miles last spring (and even fewer in the summer and fall) that a determined 6 year old could beat last years figures.

Saturday I had a good ride though. Russ and I hooked up and went out to Vandiver, crossing Coosa Mountain, then Double Oak Mt on highway 25. Those are two good climbs. From Vandiver, we looped out to Sterret, then back to Vandiver, where we met our wives, who joined us for another loop out to Sterret and back. Then we climbed the south Vandiver climb (I did it 1 and a half times, as I went back from the top and found the others about halfway up, turned around and climbed with them again).

All in all, it was a good ride. 65 miles and no noticeable fatigue. I felt like I could have done another 20 or 30. On the "so inconsistent" side of things, my commute into work this morning (10 miles) was agony. And with no climbing. Which of my riding personalities will show up on any given day is anyone's guess.

That's frustrating.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2006-05-09T23:16:00.000-05:00

So, it's time once again for the weekly Tuesday night "kill-your-own-grandmother-and-sell-your-firstborn-to-get-ahead" club ride, and that means that it's also time once again for the weekly thunderstorm.

It isn't enough for whoever controls the weather around here that the ride is 90 minutes of anaerobic agony...apparently I need a good dose of dodging lightning bolts as well. Though my trusty mechanical steed is carbon fiber everywhere I could afford to put carbon fiber, there are still enough metal parts to make this an uncomfortable situation. Really. Everytime I saw a lightning bolt I instinctively ducked my head as though if I couldn't see it, it couldn't hit me. Not that it mattered that I wasn't looking where I was going anyway...my sunglasses (clear lenses) were too fogged to see through, and the rain was falling too hard to leave my eyes unprotected.

So I got home, thoroughly soaked. I showered, changed clothes and headed back to the car to go to Christopher's band concert. As I sat in the driver's seat, I realized that I had forgotten to dry it off before sitting back down with clean dry jeans on. (Yes, this probably would have been a good time to let Kenny use his newly minted driver's license)

So I had a constant reminder for the duration of the concert of why I really don't like the rain.

I shouldn't complain too badly though...I had a good ride going until Zeus decided to throw a temper tantrum. Granted, the ride was a bit less intense than some weeks, but Ruffner was tough, and I was wheezing like a leaky tire at the top of John Rodgers Drive. A little gap opened there, but I managed to close it down and was with the lead group all the way to 78, where the rain started and we all headed back to the cars instead of doing Old Leeds Road.

Cherohala is only 5 weeks away. If I don't put some miles in before then, I'll be praying for a thunderstorm so that I have an excuse to not look like a hack that failed to train again this year.

The First Try

2006-05-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

So, I was reading a blog that Dan Tindall recommended and I thought, this is a pretty good way to let family & such know what's going on...so here it is, my Blog.

I'm sure I'll create a more informative article tomorrow when the sound of my keyboard won't drive Cathy insane while she's trying to sleep.

Well, now she knows that I'm doing this and has coerced my promise that I would do nothing to embarrass her. (I hope spelling doesn't count).