Race Schedule

Tenative 2007 Race Schedule. Click on it and should be readable.

Bittersweet...

A sweet covered bridge along the way...

Today was the day that every cyclist dreams of...the first day of the year without leg warmers, knee warmers, or booties, just straight shootin' shorts. Weather forecast was perfect for the day: Partly sunny, high of 58. I was itchin to ride so I figured what better way to welcome the fair weather than with the accent up Mountain Lake. I was feelin' a little gumpous so I said hell, why not make it two trips up the mountain. So I packed up the Mazda and drove to the Newport YMCA, that way I would aviod having to ride 10 miles on a 4 lane divided highway.

For those who don't know, Mountain Lake is the local epic climb. I've actually grown pretty fond of the climb over the past few months. The climb has an average grade of roughly 7% over 6.5 miles covering over 2,500 ft of elevation gain. Time wise, if you make it to the top in less than 35 minutes, you prolly aint lolligagin'. For those who still don't know...thats pretty big.

I changed and rolled out from my car and cruised along the creek that makes its way to Mt. Lake Rd. where the road starts to kick up. The first time up the climb was uneventful except that it was the best I've ever felt up the mountain. I rolled over the top and it was time to enjoy the next 10 min. railing 40mph turns. Sweet. The second climb back up wasn't quite as nice. I was about a third of the way up when I felt my rear tire getting a little squishy. Flat tire. With nothing in my pockets except for the keys to get back into my car, all I could do was limp back down the mountain trying not to slide out of control. Along the way I was fortunate enough to have a dog come after me. Trying to sprint away from a dog under these conditions is less than ideal but nontheless, I managed to make it back to the car safely. I quickley loaded up and sped home where I cooked up a manly portion of fresh pasta.
It was so much fun, I'm gonna do it again tomorrow...

The Cove

I decided to head out and see what the trails had in store today. I drove up to Carvin's Cove, just west of Roanoke. Just as I was about to get to doin my thing this guy comes out out of the woods and says that the trails are too messy to ride. Not thinking that this guy knew anything about what he was talking about I continued on to the trailhead. It only took about 30 until I realized what the man had been talking about, and he wasnt lying. It was just muddy but the ground was saturated. My wheels sunk about a full two inches into the soft mud but I decided to ride it out, hoping it would get better. Well, it didnt, but I did manage to find a whole new section of trails, probably doubling the number of trails I knew in the park. One of them was a really sweet downhill. It was fast, really fast and really long, probably about 10 solid minutes of switchbacks. The only better descents that I can think of are Mt. Snow and the Hunter Mtn. world cup course. By the time I hit the bottom I was stuggling to keep my hands on the bar.

The most interesting part of the ride came once I was back at the car. The guy that had parked next to me came out of the woods and from about 100 feet away I could tell there was something different about his pedal stoke. As he got closer I realized that he had two prostetic legs from the knee down. I was really pretty impressed that this guy had been out there on a day like this, but more so that he even rides at all. It was kinda one of those moments where you realized how lucky you are for what you've got. We could all use a few more of them.

What were we thinkin...?

The plan for the weekend was simple...Mattchew, Brandon, and myself were going to ride to Shenendoah 100 course on Saturday, camp out in our cars, then do it again on Sunday. Easier said then done.

Our two day adventure starting to turn sour after Matt decided that he wouldn't be able to make the trip down to Virginia because of the massive amount of snow they had gotten back home. Apparently Penndot is really gay and didnt think that they needed to plow 8 inches of snow off major interstate highways across the state, worthless... so nontheless, it turned out that it would only be me and Brandon headed to Harrisonburg for the rediculous ride.

All went well on the drive up and I met Brandon at Cici's, a local Ayce pizza joint. The only thing I can compare this place to is Chucky Cheese's without the huge plastic tube mazes. It was crazy. After we had our fill of greasy, calorie stuffed pizza we drove into the forest and set up camp. Luckily the weather held out as we were able to enjoy a brisk 10 degrees for the first night of sleeping. The secret to staying warm was idling the cars for hours at a time and blasting super-heated air in our faces. We woke up at 6am for our first day of riding. We started at the begining of the loop hoping that we would be finishing all 100 miles before we ran out of daylight. The first climb treated us pretty well despite there being 3 inches of snow with about an inch of ice on top of that. We headed into the first section of singletrack once we rolled over the top of the mountain and started to make our way through the ice covered rock gardens. With Brandon just up the trail from me we made our way slowly down the mountain. Brandon had the first sweet crash of the day when he almost face-planted into a tree. All I could do was laugh. After a lengthy road section we hit the second climb of the day, this one was unridable. We spent more than one hour hiking straight up a mountian, stopping several times to eat, go to the bathroom, or just straight-up delay the miserable death-march. Once we reached the top and started down the sweet downhill we realized how worthwhile the hike had been. The ice and snow combo actually provided alot of grip as we carved our way back down to the fireroad and to the cars.

Up until this point we, or at least I, felt that we were making pretty good time and thought that we would get most of the loop done. Then we found out that it took us over 4 hours to do the first 20 miles. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend, we aint gonna be ridin no 200 miles.

We fueled up and headed out on a second loop that we expected would take us until nightfall. It was pretty uneventful except for "crunch". If your not familiar, crunch is when your rear tire breaks through the icy layer on top of the snow. It almost always brings you to a complete stop and after about 5 minutes of it you feel like slitting your wrist on your chainring.

Day 2 was just as epic as the first. It started just like the first, climbing. To our suprise we were able to ride for more than an hour straight! Who would have thought? Don't get too excited yet, all the fun came to a stop once we hit solid ice. Then we walked for another hour. It was fun. We heat-butted bushes covered in ice, had two lunch breaks, and ate icycles, all the while wondering why we had even left the cars that morning. The only thing that kept of moving up the climb was the thought of an awesome desent back down to the fireroad. Unfortunatly, the climb was more fun than the downhill. We slid on our ass down the icy trail like a 3rd grader on a sliding board. Then something crazy happened, towards the bottom of the trail we ran into this foreign brown stuff of the trail. It turned out it was just dirt but it had been so long since we had seen it we were suprised by it. By the time we got to the paved road at the bottom both of us were totally demoralized and cold so we hightailed it back on the fireroad, packed up, and went to Taco Bell.

The stats for the weekend:

Total miles logged: 65

Total Hours logged: 13

Average Speed:5.4

#of Little Debbie Creme Pies I consumed: 12

# of dominated toilets: 2 + one urinal

Lets see how it goes next weekend...

Somethin Crazy

This blogging thing has gotten out of hand, apparently you aint no one unless ya got one. I swore I would never have one but after seeing everyone that I know spill their guts on their own website, I've decided to reconsider my opinion about them and will try to have a postive atitude towards them and their creators from here on out. Anyway, I'm finally over the flu that has plagued me for the past two weeks. It feels good to actually do something other than nothing. Before my down time I had been putting in some solid winter miles and I was pretty happy with where I was. Oh yeah, and I'm finally keeping a training log.

My first fitness test of the year was the Owen Cup, a local psuedo-race where all the locals come out to show off their hard work during the off season. Turns out I was faster than I would have ever imagined, cause I rode away from a local Pro/Cat 1/Cat 2 peloton and stayed there for over 50 miles. It was pretty intense, and hurt pretty bad.

As I write this I'm packing up to go on one of the more mannlier outings that I've ever thought of doing. The goal is to meet B-randon and matteo in Harrisonburg to do a double mountain bike century on the Shenandoah 100 course. Hopefully were far enough south to avoid Sasquatch and his crazy shenanigans, but we'll see.

So there you have it, my first blog posting...take it or leave it