vaca!

it's been a crazy week. tons of work. jenn and i leave for florida tonight to visit family, back next thursday, unpack, then re-pack for 6am flight to sea ottah on friday. besides trying to find time to ride for a couple hours/day, i've got one of those pesky job things that's been really crazy the past couple months, this vaca is just what we need right now. jenn's been working mad overtime at her gig, so we're both ready to get the heck out of here and just chill-out. initially, i was thinking the 6-day trip would be a rest wk from the bike, but the legs are feeling good, no signs of overtraining, so might as well take it up a notch and try to get some quality hours in, train hard for 6 days, then taper for 3 before the ottah. i might not be super-fresh for the otter, but it's not an "A" race, the Cohutta 100miler is the one i need to be ready for.

6 days of eating well, catching lots of zzz's, riding under sun-drenched skies, hanging with the fam, little beach-time, get re-acquainted w/my wife... even gonna play golf a couple times! to me, golf is a relaxing walk in the park, with a game thrown-in to amuse ourselves with while we wait for the 19-yr old nubile cart girl to come rollin' around with a cpl cold ones. gotta beat the heat somehow! as andy would say, "there's plenty of time to master golf when we can't throw a leg over the tob tube anymore." no doubt!

tragedy

I was thinking about posting something about how the weather here has been really great, how the legs are feeling good after the century, how my custom IFab Steel Deluxe will be ready by the Cohutta 100miler... but instead, i need to post this link to Adam's blog - as it has me thinking about how precious every single day is and how i need to be more careful out there... not just for myself, but for my family and my friends. my wife and i saw our baby for the first time via sonogram yesterday and that younster deserves to have a father, not a memory of other people's memories. the rest of this week, i'm going to think about how to be safer on the bike - and take permanent action to do so. life is too precious to take chances... and as we can see in Adam's post, it isn't always someone who's "taking a chance" who passes. what a tragedy.

first century of the season

had a great ride yesterday to wachusetts and back. (andy's map). brad and andy hung in medford on friday night so we'd make the 7am start time, but the pile of beers we ended-up drinking while shooting the shit and staring at our bikes had us 15mins late. didn't really help the legs either, but what kind of epic would it be w/o a good night of goofing-off before the ride!?

rode-out to wa-wa in a paceline, pretty dangerous on the narrow, pot-holed roads, but it was worth it - got-out to the 40m mark way ahead of schedule. on the next section, the climb up to wachusetts (wa-wa) rob had to turn-back early from the climb to ride w/brad who was in pure survival mode (as andy would say). our early paceline work really destroyed brad's legs. he doesn't have the same base as rob, john, andy and myself, but he's a tough dude and didn't complain once. rob saw the need to get brad back a little early and took one for the team. very solid, but that's rob.

it was the first time i've ever ridden on the road with john hurley, that brother's got some legs! he really pushed the pace down off the mtn, we were flat-out tt'ing it back to the mid-point (rob's parent's house). hurley made a strong move on a short climb, gapped andy by 100ft, i another 100ft off andy's wheel. we chased each other at full-tilt for 10-15miles until slamming into a large climb like water on rock. after meeting-back up at rob's parents place after the descent (we did get turned-back from the summit early due to a damn ski slope running across the auto-road!), andy dropped back to ride back to medford w/brad while john, rob and i worked a fast pace through concord. i did some work on this section, but rob had go-go in him and hurley was flat-out on fire, so i mostly just hung-on. i'm more apt to work a climb than the flats and they dropped my sorry ass once when sprinting for a town sign, but managed to crawl back-up about 5miles later. this is the time in a long ride i call the pain cave. just hanging-on, head-down, using all energy possible to keep the legs turning-over in a gear that's 2 cogs harder then what's even slightly comfortable. after we hit concord, hurley broke-off to get a cpl extra miles in. he re-set his computer 10m into the ride and insisted it was going to read 100mile by the time he got home - that dude's a trip.

expected a slightly more mellow pace yesterday, it ended-up being quite the rip! great riding, feeling good today. the 10lbs of good food i ate last night here in NH at Jenn's sisters place (surf and turf to celebrate her 35th), hit the spot. i hope all the other ride junkies out there got their fix this wknd as well.

winds are finally calm

After almost 2 weeks of 15+mph winds, last couple of days have been a nice break. the riding has been so much easier w/o pushing a monster headwind, also a lot easier riding the road bike! since it's technically a rest wk, i've ditched the drag suit for some skinny tires and the legs are thanking me in a big way. but man, it's hard to take it easy. after an easy day or two there's so much energy, it's hard to hold-back, but, saturday's planned ride is a good reason to rest a bit! we've got a good posse for this one - Rob Follansbee, Andy Sanidas, Brad Beveridge, John Hurley and myself. A bunch of mtbikers pushing road bikes around. I take that back, Hurley's actually a trials guy who converted to the road early last season - loves those crit races, jumping curbs, freaking dudes out. Whatever works! glad to have him along. with 5 riders a' pullin', we should break 8 hours for the 130mile trek from Medford to the summit of Wachusetts and back, which is super-key as jenn's bro is picking me up at 4pm to head to NH for carole anne's (their sister) b-day. i'm sure we'll get our johnny on. that's a solid recovery drink. In all seriousness, though, after last wknd's debauchery, i'm taking it easy for a while, really focusing on the training, recovery and whatnot. Doesn't mean i can't have a few pops, but no reason to get all freaky.

if you don't make dust you eat dust

jenn and i cruised to a new-to-us chinese place on saturday, it got good reviews, tasty stuff. as usual, we were presented with a couple fortune cookies at the end of the meal. i'd been talking about the interval work planned for sunday during the meal and my fortune read, "if you don't make dust you eat dust." i didn't realize kicking ass was a chinese proverb, but hey, whatever works. i was inspired to have a good session.

sunday was cloudy, winds around 15mph from the wnw, temps right above freezing, occasional light snowflakes floating down. legs felt great right off the get-go and i found myself pushing into the 170's on the HRM. kept the tempo high until reaching concord (about 60mins into the ride), then began some short pyramid interval work - 100% efforts. after the first one i felt sick, but no worries, just the hammer heed mixing with some sugar in the guts? on the 3rd effort my body just broke-down, back suddenly felt strained and i had to shut 'er down. max heart rate was mid 180's, so something just wasn't working right. opted instread to keep the heart rate up as high as possible for the rest of the ride for a "simulated race." ended-up crawling home 40mins earlier than expected with only 60-65miles laid-down. the day just didn't go as planned. i tried to make dust, but ended-up eating some.

now, the question is, why did i break-down yesterday? too much training? not enough rest? i'd tapered-back over the past couple days... i'm thoroughly frightened of rest weeks and haven't taken one in months. i've taken it easy for a day or two, but not for a week. can i rest this week and still expect to be ready for Sea Otter on April 9th and then have a small peak for Cohutta 100miler on April 22nd as planned? it looks like if i don't i may burn-out, so i guess the decision is being made for me... i hate rest.

temps barely at 20 this morning, can hear the wind pushing on the house in gusts. winter is fighting to hold-on.

good food, good wine

had tentative plans to ride the quad state double century today, but it just didn't work-out. am really impressed with the level of support provided by Sandy Whittlesey and crew and look forward to hooking-up with those folks in the near future. i haven't really done any epics on the road (to me a double is an epic) and never a umca sanctioned event. to those guys a double is a warm-up ride for a long season to come. it's inspiring.

tomorrow is supposed to be a bit warmer (38), calmer winds, am looking forward to getting outside for the first real interval work of the season, have a pretty ambitious plan for the day. bike commuting offers some aspects of intervals, but nothing like getting-out on the road bike with a set schedule of self-inflicted misery. it'll be great. tapered-down a tad at the end of this week and am resting today with the hopes of having a real solid session.

am also resting today 'cause some old friends came-over for dinner, will and beth were here from seattle, bought a bunch of fish and Doug cooked-up an amazing seafood boullabaise. great excuse to drink too much good wine, then with it being st patty's day, followed the wine with a btl of irish whiskey. needless to say, feeling a little rough today... dr mike is hanging, jenn has convinced him that a movie and chinese food is a better decision than going to work... big day here in medfah.

Ride Junkie - the Blog finally has a "real" name!

After almost 150 posts, a name for my blog (besides my name) has finally surfaced. After a night ride last week, Andy and I stood around in the basement, drinking a couple Bass ales and jibber-jabbering about how much this winter has rocked, how much we truly love to ride and what we'd do to get-out of work, out of chores, out of spending time w/non-riding humans in order to get our ride-on - and if for some reason the ride falls through, ahhh shit, brutha's just aren't in a good mood, you know? Be it a 30min pain machine session or an all-day epic, those around us can certainly be on the periphery when we're looking to ride. Andy finally said it best, "just a couple of ride junkies." Yup. Could be worse, though… and so the blog has finally been christened with this post.

Real nice ride to work today, temps right around 35, ample sunshine, winds have calmed to 15-20mph. Rode up along the Fells before heading into the office. Been slowly working-out new routes to extend the commute, finding extra climbs, stretches of road uninterrupted by traffic lights, trying to wean myself off the indoor pain machine. The commute is so stop-and-go riding the pain machine adds some steady spinning mid-week, but it's pretty lame in comparison to being outside!

As usual, it's 9am and can't wait to get-back out there for the ride home. Luckily, my job is pretty active (and it's enjoyable), lots to do and the workday just flys-by, sometimes a bit too quick, so I better stop typing and get working.

tough one

the weather and i did not get along today. rob seemed to enjoy it from an email he sent, "Nice day for riding. On the way home another rider and I were pushing 40 with the tailwind." this was while i slooooowly passed another rider on rt 3 in arlington (going maybe 12-14mph), couple fools fighting the inevitable. had to cut things 30' short. cold rain and tight legs for breakfast, 20+mph steady headwind for dinner. according to this, winds are more intense here than the infamous windy city. sounds like a good place to make a whole bunch o' power w/o pollution. imagine that. power w/o pollution. the shallows along the massachusetts coast would rip-out killowatts day after day, w/no undue side effects minus the occasional bird casuality. oh yeah, the loss of a view of endless water for a few thousand folks. wouldn't want to ruin our precious view. destroy the planet, leave nothing for our children, but at least we're enjoying the view... i think thousands of sleek windmills churning-away in the ocean would be a pretty awesome sight.

breezy

This 7-day outlook pretty much sums it up.
Could make for an interesting road epic sunday.
Poured all night, definitely will make for an interesting commute.

beat

visited mike and sarah in vt this wknd. saw their new place. amazing. their land abuts camel hump state forest, a shallow fast-moving river runs through the backyard, a small beaver pond even closer. i can't imagine a more amazing experience for a child than to be able to sit inside the living room and watch beavers work on their dam. fly fishing in the backyard. who needs tv in such a place?

mike and i got out on Mt Ellen on saturday. warm temps softened-up the snow on most of the hill, patches of sheet ice scattered about. mike grabbed his snowboard for the first time in 2yrs. his comment on snowboarding, "it's just not very hard." i agree. can't wait to tele next yr. this being my 2nd time-out this yr fell about 50times riding the steep bumps, am kinda beat-up, back is tight-as. in a bizzare sheet-ice fall while trying to avoid running-over a skier who freaked on the ice, mike got brained pretty bad, still had him a bit dazed today. with that happening and considering tele fest was rollin' at the river, snowboarding with me was quite a sacrifice for him... we did discuss my first run on my "new-to-me" tele's being a traverse of the ridge that connects mt ellen to mad river, but it just didn't seem to make sense - can't wait to do it next yr! drinking beers later in the day at tele fest did of course make sense. sarah and jenn joined us there, before heading to sarah's sister's 40th b-day party. good people, good times, way too much good wine. thank goodness we had two pregnant ladies to cart us around!

even though this wknd was technically a rest wknd and i haven't touched a bike, am beat-down tired, but excited about having some rest in the legs for first time in weeks. the season is looming close, have some real good rides planned over the next 3wks. first race 4 wks from now. can't wait, it's gonna be worth the 4000mile plane ride!

Drag Suit

Today kicked-off kinda slow. Went for a mtb ride w/andy last night, didn't get to sleep till later than normal (11p). have been putting a lot of hours into the legs and if i don't get 8hrs, am not at 100%, was really dragging at 630a wake-up. but, after getting some java going, bronte and i hit the Fells for a walk while jenn headed for the gym. Even pregnant she's really working hard to rehab her knee so that next season she's ready to ski, run, whatever. Takes a lot to be pregnant and keep putting-in the hours, pretty impressive stuff. Anyway, once Bronte and I got to the fells, she started diggin' around for the perfect stick. i have no idea what the determining factors are for the perfect stick, one of those things only a dog knows... 2mins later she pops-out of the woods with a log 4ft long and 6" in diameter, thing probably weighed 30lbs! i managed to toss it about 10 feet for her, start walking and she takes me out at the knees running with it in her jaws, my precious coffee drops, the lid pops-off and it pools like black gold on top of the frozen dirt and pine needles. ahgggg! i almost got down to lick it off the dirt i was so desperate for the precious caffeine... Labs.

I've commandered one of Jenn's digital camera's, been trying to spruce-up the blog with some photos. So far, i've taken 3 pics in a wk, a real shutter-bug... the attached shot is of Jenn's 30+lb commuter w/Kevlar tires (i've also commandered her bike until i get around to putting a new drivetrain on mine) and the Bailey Works bag (a gift from Jenn, it's lasted 1000 working days at least) i haul all my crap in: laptop and geek accessories (safe from the elements in the "laptop sock"), work clothes, extra hats/gloves, power foods, tubes, tools, pump, T tokens, first-aid supplies, lunch, beers (on the way home of course), maps, - you get the point, lots of crap - according to my scale at home - about 20lbs worth. Who needs weights when you can just make yourself 20lbs heavier and push big gears on a heavy-as bike!? The Drag Suit has served my legs well the past couple seasons. It just feels so EASY to ride the road bike and "racing" mtbike after a winter of drag suit riding - with the slightest effort they fly! And that's just the point of a drag suit...

I think I saw Lloyd Graves riding down Forest St in Medford this morning. I was heading to work, he the opposite direction. An early morning ride in the Fells? Maybe i imagined it... maybe not. It's hard to tell sometimes.

weather"man"?

this morning i hopped-on the pain machine for a quick 40mins to open-up the legs before riding to work. have a mtb ride on-tap with andy tonight and am traveling this wknd so figured i could get 4hrs of riding today if i used every free moment to pedal. i digress, as usual, watched the news and the weather on NECN while chugging coffee and pedaling away. Matt Noyes usually steers me straight, gives me the skinny on what to expect. he's your usual weatherman, kinda funny, kinda geeky, pretty normal dude. one of my secret (well, not that secret) passions is the weather, so i find myself reading Matt's blog, and reading the skiing weather dude's site, but they're missing something... i got bored of the news after about 2mins and started channel surfing and came across the adjacent weather"man" on the spanish channel. i have no idea what she was saying or what part of the country the forecast was for, but it was relatively riveting stuff. in the immortal words of my beautiful wife jennifer, "Pig."

wknd rides

saturday started cold and tight. 9a, temps in the high 2o's rising to mid 30's by end of ride, steady 20mph wind from the wnw. Rob joined-up for this one, he was riding well, while 90mins into the ride i was struggling to get the HR up w/o the legs feeling like hot lava was coursing through 'em. found myself worried about today's ride 90mins into saturday's ride, not a good place to be... heard about good powdah in the north country, could grab the board and head for the hills?... but, here on the coast temps were most excellent for getting the road rides in, have to see it through and hope for the best. pedal. pedal. pedal...

woke-up today to more sunshine, did a quick strength workout and felt decent. made a big breakfast, hung-out w/Jenn... at noon andy rolled-down on a borrowed '99 lemond beunos aires all fired-up for some time on the road. by 1p it was 40, winds still near 20, real nice day. i haven't taken much rest in the past couple wks and with yesterday's stuggles wasn't hoping for much out of the legs, but today's weather was inspiring. andy pushed the pace early and i struggled on the climbs like crazy. then right around 90mins into today's ride the lava in the legs finally burned off and i was free. free to just do whatever i wanted to on the bike, it became a child's toy. golden legs. right in the middle of a long wk in a base phase. wham! there they were. wild. an hour before i was deep in the pain cave, struggling to hold andy's wheel, then wham! never had that happen before. w/o a training partner i wonder if i would have been able to push through like that? i don't think so...

i'd begun to get worried a bit as i hadn't had any break-throughs for months it seems... was wondering if i'd been training right. too hard? too weak? not enough rest? not at the right time? blah, blah, blah, all that crap. then today andy started the ride on fire, just hammered it out and somewhere in the middle of the pain, it completely disappeared and in it's place was golden legs. the longer i ride, the more surprised i become at how the body reacts - maybe someday i'll figure-out how to master the peaks and valleys. but man, days like this sure are fun. they make it all worth while. the cupcakes jenn had waiting at home were pretty damn awesome too. nothing washes hammer soy down like a couple beers, i mean cupcakes.

oh yeah, winds were so bad up north on the mtns a lot of lifts were on hold. guess i made the right decision to stay home and stick it out! only 5 more days till a full day of rest. shit, maybe even two days of rest.

the academy awards are actually pretty entertaining tonight. imagine that. and i heard the ratings were projected to be bad becuase it was all "independent films." in my opinion, most are not independent per say, but "less mainstream." either way, thank goodness.

drivetrains

as usual, spring = time for a new drivetrain. usually need 2 per mtbike per year, but only 1 for the road bike (it is so smoked by Spring!). have just used the same component set-up each time, but am now thinking 'bout making a change. i'm hoping for some comments here...

mtb: i've been rolling with an xtr rear derailuer, xt shifter/brake pods, xt cassette , and XTR cranks (with whatever rings jamie's got in stock). thinking about going with a SRAM set-up this yr. sram 9.0 maybe. but 7.0 looks pretty decent too? is the 9.0 worth the extra duckets and is the X.O worth it at all? the XT cassette always feels "clunky", like the gears are slamming into place as i shift, not a real smooth feel, even when new, but it's not horrible, just not optimal. rode andy's new SRAM 9.0 rear derailuer and cassette and it felt way smoother than my Shitmano set-up.

road: currently roll with campy Veloce groupset, minus a Centaur rear derailuer - no complaints at all, beside it being totally smoked, thinking about ditching a bit of weight and going with Chorus set-up. worth the extra cash over Veloce? any other bonuses to Chorus vs Veloce or Centaur?

this wknd is shaping-up nicely. have 2 decent road rides on tap, hopefully about 4hrs a piece. biggest benefit to riding on the road is that i don't have to drive to trails, set-up gear, drive home, etc. a 4hr ride takes 4hrs of daylight, which leaves me with plenty of time to spend with Jenn, go for a hike, see some friends, all that good stuff... everything in balance. but it can be damn tough when you're addicted to the bike sometimes...

damn good winter riding

i'm finding it tough to find more than 120' / day each and every day... but this is not the time for excuses. once this crap is laid-down, can move-on to the fun stuff, but that's still 6-8wks away. this week has been going pretty well, though. temps have been above 20, wind speeds below 20, was almost balmy on our night ride yesterday. it hasn't been over freezing since it snowed on sat, so very little ice and a nice crusty snow, good traction. technically the Fells are closed to biking jan 1st-april 15th - and i obey those rules - except when the ground is frozen rock-hard, then i think it's ok to get in there. the park should really be closed on a more flexible "mud season" schedule, but that would take too many resources to manage? take last yr for example, it rained for 20 days straight in May, there's no reason anyone should have been riding in the Fells, beating-up the trails w/that much mud. but, they were open and folks were riding and digging things up. common sense is hard to come-by sometimes. in jan, during the long thaw, saw all sorts of folks biking in the Fells, can still see their tire tracks frozen in the dirt. there are plenty of places to ride within 30miles of Boston when conditions are like that, but some folks just don't have any common sense or are too lazy to drive an extra 20mins... wow, where'd that soapboxing come from!?

i refuse to not get the hours i'm looking for this wk! - and everything is on-target. jenn and i have already planned the wknd, no reason why i won't get the rides in... and it's a good thing as the next two wknds are jammed-full of stuff. looking to get a real looonnng ride in soon. JB sent me info on this one - double century in mid-march? could be brutal. who am i kidding? it will be brutal! when done, however, it'll feel so right... what's worse, how much your ass hurts 8hrs into a ride like that - or thinking about how much it'll hurt for a wk leading up to the ride? guess it's best to just not think about it at all! be like buddha. accept it for what it is - damn good winter riding.