Big Creek Road Race report

I wasn't supposed to be racing my bike on a beautiful Saturday morning in October. Oh wait, it was actually August, but I'm sure I can be forgiven for thinking it was a beautiful fall morning with the brilliant sun shining down and the long sleeve temperatures hugging us in their embrace. I was supposed to be piping the drier in our basement to it's new home snuggled against the washer that I'd moved earlier in the week. The rain out of Race like a girl on Thursday night and a thoughtful wife changed my Saturday plans so I could keep my legs sharpened up for my goal race of the summer this coming weekend- 24 hours of 7 oaks.

I was more nervous heading out to this race than I had been pretty much all summer. This would be my first chance mixing it up in a road race, the cat 4's and 5's were to be combined, and I really wanted to avoid meeting the pavement up close and personally. I swallowed my nerves, dropped the money on the table, and grabbed a race number. Only 8 were signed up when I put my name on the list. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. I went about my pre-race activities and got a short warm up in. I hadn't ridden the course, so I really didn't know if there were any hills to speak of, but a few others informed me it was pretty flat overall. I wasn't sure if that would be a boon or burden to me as the call was made to line up.

Waiting for the start:

Wow, there were a ton of guys lined up. Surely there can't be this many in the 4/5 race. I was wrong. I've heard counts that there were some 50ish of us lined up to take the start of the race. 46 miles in 8 laps with a huge pack and a bunch of nervous bike handlers. Maybe I should drop out the back and ride my own race. That thought repeated several times during the race as we went round and round. We shot off on the first lap and I was sitting somewhere in the middle of a giant swarm. I could see the pack of riders stringing out towards the front and knew I wanted to be somewhere closer to them. However, the first lap wasn't going to be the place to get there.

As we wound our way back through the chip seal park road nearing the end of our first lap, it happened. I think we all knew it would, but were just wondering when and who. Just in front and a couple feet to the right of me, I heard some shouting, some locked up brakes, and the sounds of aluminum and carbon attempting to integrate themselves into new shapes and splinters. Luckily the crash was just far enough right that I flew by uncollected as the pile up gathered a number of guys. I caught a glimpse out of my peripheral vision of the bikes piling up and thought quietly that I hoped everyone was fine. The pack soldiered on and we finished out our lap.

I quickly decided that I needed to be a bit further towards the pointy end of the field and starting picking my way through as best I could. Slowly, I worked into the top 20 or so riders as we started putting on more laps. Though I don't remember seeing it, apparently there was an attack on lap 3 that melted back into the pack pretty quickly, but succeeded in raising our pace to near 26 MPH for that lap as we accelerated to counter. That succeeded in throwing off roughly half the pack and put us closer to 30 riders now in the main group.

Somewhere in the middle laps, I had a few things I noted. At one point, I looked back to see how many were left in the pack only to realized I was tail end charlie so I hightailed it up a few spots lest I be dropped for being an idiot. I also realized that the game of keeping your wheel clear of the other guy was both tiring and not all that much fun. Accelerate, brake, coast, pedal, swerve and repeat. I still was thinking of whether it would be better to drop myself off the back and ride alone or stay in the pack as long as I could.

I honestly never thought much about competing for the win. I wanted to finish the race and be road rash free. However, I'm still a competitive guy and I thought that I might be able to at least sneak a good finish in or possible help out in some small way if any of our team wanted to try to make a move. I stayed with the pack and decided to ride it out.

The last lap was the most fun for me. Having ridden a few Tuesday nights through to the point where some attacks are occurring, I was pretty ready for the biting of the bars that occurs as the pack accelerates out of the corners. On the right hander into the tailwind section, the pack had blasted up to 30+ on every lap as we rounded the corners. I'm in no way, shape, or form a sprinter, so I really have to wind it up and keep the hammer down to not be dropped in these accelerations. As we hit the corner for the last lap, I dug down and prepped for the hard push that I expected to come and to possibly shake a few guys off. The next thing I know, I'm wound up and blowing past the pack and off the front. I hesitated for a second or two wondering what I should do next.

I was pretty sure I didn't have the legs to stay away and didn't have anyone looking like they were going to bridge the gap. I was 50-100 yards out front by this point and still cranking away. I knew I'd be gone if I tried to hold on as the pack would eat me up and spit me out like a piece of gristle as they passed. I engaged my brain at this point, dialed my pace back enough to let my heart rate drop back a bit, and waited. About 10 seconds later, the pack had me, but I had recovered enough to hop right back in and go.

With roughly 1/2 mile to the finish, the pack seemed to solidly into one solid mass. As we tried to adhere to the center line rule, the pack spread from ditch to centerline with no real place to move forward. A line or two moved up on the outside and I grabbed wheels where I could to make my way up. As we came down to the final sprint, we went full road width (is that the way it should be?) and wound it up. I had more or less boxed myself in for the sprint and with my slow wind up, I was still spinning it up as we hit the line. Another 100 yards or so and I think I might have moved up a few more places as I still was accelerating pretty good when we hit the finish. Looking at the photo I stole from Chad (thanks), it appears I'm sitting in 12th across the line which is definitely fine by me. Congrats to team mate Reed on taking the win and Chad on coming in 6th.

Still winding it up (I'm the rider on the left side entering the picture):

I did get some flack for my gut reaction I posted to facebook after the race, so here are a few of my post race thoughts. I was really looking forward to trying my hand at road racing. My fitness is the best it's been, I'm getting good at riding with a pack and knowing where the jumps will be, and I thought maybe we'd get a few team mates into some type of break. The reality was that while I was working hard, I never really redlined it, the biggest excitement was trying not to hit someone or be hit, and my single foolish attack should/could have been a good move if I'd thought to put it together with a couple team mates. I also had enough sense to figure out my foolishness quickly enough that I didn't get dropped, so my tactics are completely lacking. All in all, I ended up a bit on the bored side as I was looking/hoping there would be more excitement and pegging it as we took turns beating on each other. Sure, I'd have most likely been off the back, but that experience also makes you better/stronger in the long run. I guess I had built up road racing to possibly be the end all, be all of racing on the pavement and felt a bit deflated at the end. I'll definitely try it again though and maybe my experience and expectations will help me change my perspective on it.

Focus

Focus is an important thing. Whether you're talking about something as simple as taking a picture, picking your way through technical singletrack, or just looking at your path through life. If you don't focus, chances are you're going to run into something you didn't see coming. One could argue that I'm lacking focus right now and have been for a while. the picture I've put up is a pretty good representation of my life at this point in time.

At first glance, it's a snapshot. Things look good, I'm happy, I'm motivated, and I'm moving in the right direction. However, when you start looking closely, you'll see the edges are blurred, I'm looking at the camera instead of following the line, and the smile is mostly put on for the benefit of others. It's pretty amazing the similarities I can draw in my life to those items. While I can't complain too loudly as I'm healthy, have a great family, and am gainfully employed at a job that pays well enough for my wife to stay home, there's turmoil under the surface.

The same job that affords us the life we want does so at a cost to my mental well being. I know everyone has a job that's a grind and that's the tradeoff we make to have the enjoyment we want in other areas of life. But when you are on the verge of dreading going to work on a daily basis, go out of your way to not do your work, and can see the apathy towards your work spreading into other areas of your life, I think those are pretty good signs that something needs to change. I have no clue about what else I WANT to do, but I'm pretty sure it's not this. My job really isn't even that hard, but when you're not interested or stimulated, it can seem like the biggest drag in the world.

So what does all this have to do with focus you ask? I'm not exactly sure, but I think my job is the center of things beginning to fall apart. I ride to escape from work and in doing so I also escape things that I shouldn't be running from. I skip out on my duties as husband and dad. I skip out on other commitments that I have made. I skip out on taking on my own demons. I just escape when I ride. I push myself to go further, faster, harder, and in the end I tire myself out to the point that everything else really doesn't matter. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the riding immensely, but the reasons I ride now aren't what should be driving me. An enlightened and surprising discussion with my own dad on Memorial Day led to this revelation. He suggested that I should take a look at the reason I'm biking to escape and work on fixing that rather than work so hard on wearing myself out on the bike that the other things don't matter. He was right.

Damn, now I had to actually set down and figure out what I need to do. At least in my case, it was relatively clear for most of the things I needed. The biggest thing is that we need to find ourselves as a family. With our current setup I'm a paycheck and Miranda is a parent and we don't do a whole lot of overlapping. That's pretty sad when you really look closely at it. I've got a wife and 2 year old little girl that I love to death, but I'm spending my time avoiding them. I've let my own personal goals become my focus in lieu of working on the things that are going to be a constant for the rest of my life. Definitely near sighted of me. As much as I'd like to shoulder the blame all alone, I can't. My dear wife has very similar issues to me. We're both living to get done with our day and then escaping into our own little worlds as soon as that day ends- mine with leaving work and hers with putting Corley to bed.

All of these thoughts and ideas finally came out in a multi hour discussion last night. We talked about the things we need to change, the things we want to do, and the things that just aren't working for us. We put together a plan and we both came away happy. We each had to make certain concessions to bring us closer as a family, but I can't see how that is a bad thing. I'm sure I'll reap more in the long term than I could possibly ever gain in a short span.

As such, I'm giving up a few things that really didn't matter that much even though I'd made them into something big. I'm not going to Burning Man this year. I'd love to and even have a free ticket, but I'm not doing it without my family. I'm hanging up my pipe dreams of getting fit enough to try my hand at bike racing for the time being. I'm even talking about getting rid of my car (which for those that know me know that's something huge). Miranda is going to dedicate herself to working on our business and selling product rather than just ordering. We're going to take an evening each week to focus on our relationship as a couple. I'm going to not take on any more commitments until I get all of my current projects cleared up.

While all of this may seem overwhelming, it's a long term plan. I really feel like I'm not swimming alone now and I've got a partner in working through some of these things. I'm excited about seeing our family come together. I'm sure I'll miss out on some activities, but it's going to be worth it.

Easy like Sunday morning

Wow, what a nice overall weekend. After the hard effort at Thursday's time trial, I actually felt just fine on Sunday. One recurring theme I'm noticing is that I run out of lungs before legs. I think it's time to work on some tempo rides and breathing exercises. As I've said before, my long mileage rides have suffered greatly this year so I think it's affected my aerobic fitness.

Friday was an unexpected pleasant surprise. My mom and wife had planned on going to see Stomp at the Civic Center. I was to hang with my beautiful baby girl and was planning to make a nice homemade card for Mother's day with her. At the last minute, mom decided she really didn't feel well so offered up hanging out with Corley (and sticking close by a toilet) and letting us take the tickets since they were freebies anyway. The show was way cool even if I did battle a shot of drowsiness in the middle. Anyone else have a recurring problem where they get about an hour into something like a movie/show/etc and hit a bought of sleepiness and then recover after about 15 minutes of trying not to nod off? That's a typical event for me which I still find pretty strange.

On Saturday morning I was looking forward to grabbing my bike to work week packet with socks (I was in the top 70 registered this year!) and then meeting up with Lou and a bunch of the Rassy death squad for some hill training and racing techniques. Mother nature decided that wasn't in the cards and the ride was cancelled out and rescheduled for early afternoon which put me out of the picture. We headed down to a friend's daughter's birthday party. It was a 3 year old princess party if that gives any indication... Actually, I had a good time hanging with the various other male figures doing our duty to grill meat and drink beer! After that it was presents galore and time to head home by 1. I surprisingly had a pretty damn good time. Saturday afternoon found me doing some chores like changing oil and going to the store. After an extended store trip, Miranda was a bit on the cranky side, but she'd get over it on Sunday...

Sunday being momma's day, I didn't plan any activities for myself. I got up in the morning and made some kickass pancakes that included ricotta cheese and orange zest. I've had this recipe bookmarked for over a year and finally got the chance to make it. I wouldn't call them exactly healthy, but the flavor and texture was awesome. Even Corley ate one and a half pancakes. Considering I could only finish 3 myself, I was pretty impressed. We'll definitely be doing those again. After breakfast it was card and present time. Not having the time to do a homemade card, I had Corley color one I had picked out and then we gave momma her present. My extended trip the day before had resulted in finding the DVD/VCR combo she's been wanting for the past couple of months. I installed it and now we have access to digital broadcast TV which kicks total ass! Miranda now has access via our old VCR to do her Tai-Bo down in the basement now which should yield some good results along with her other exercise class she's starting up.

Sunday afternoon was a double bonus. Miranda apparently hit her head on something and told me to take a couple hours to go riding. In shock, I waited a bit to test her resolve, but it held fast and I hurriedly changed and took off before she could say no. As my workout from Saturday was put on rain delay, I decided to make up for it on my own today. Hill repeats at Mcrea park were the order of the day. After a warmup/recon loop, I made it through 5 repeats before I felt my ass had been kicked. 100+ feet of climb on a .8 mile loop definitely was hard work. Word is that the Rassy guys are looking to hold a crit there next year. Damn... I can only imagine the pain some of the racer's will be in for that one. All told, I need some serious work on breathing and climbing skills. I took a leisurely ride on through parts of downtown looking for signs of additional biking life at the coffee shops, but didn't find any. I headed back home and treated myself to some additional hill work in the form of taking South Union street home from downtown in lieu of my usual ride up SE 5th. 1800' of total climb in 20 miles definitely gave me some work, but I felt really good when I got home and even hammered some of the hills on the way.

This morning was my first commute of the year. It was much easier than I remember it being last year. Of course, 4,000+ miles on the legs since then and a nicer ride (even though I rode the mountain bike this morning) might make a bit of a difference. I'm hoping to get more commuting in this year other than just during this week's Bike to work week, but we'll see. I have started riding to and from more rides this year in lieu of driving to them. I know that saves some gas and I get the bonus mileage so I'm happy with that as a good start.

Mileage update

Just a quick note to let you know that I made my first big rollover of the year on Monday's ride. I rolled 1000 miles for the year thus far. Considering I didn't start riding a road bike until early May last year, I am pretty excited about having that much mileage in all ready. I'm hoping to break 4000 miles this year as I ended last calendar year with 3200ish. I definitely need to start hitting the 4+ hour weekend rides now that the weather is starting to cooperate more. Those were the mainstay of my miles last year and probably will be this year as well.

One other thing of note, of all my mileage, I put less than 20 of those on indoors! I rode all winter long, which was huge for me. It was a lot of fun playing in the snow and cold this year with the right gear to keep me warm. If I decide to do more racing next year, I might have to up the indoor training a bit though. I'd really like to try a trainer as opposed to my rollers though. I know rollers are great for form, but I just couldn't stay on them longer than 20 minutes without getting numb nuts going on. Personally, I think I'd probably do better on riding a stationary trainer where I can zone out into my own little world and just put the hurt on.

Elkhart TT #1

Last night was the first installment of the Elkhart time trials this year. Actually the first one was rained out so this was the first time we actually got to ride. I pretty much confirmed my suspicions last night, yup, I'm slow! Actually, I'm sure there are a host of reasons I could use as an excuse, but overall my body and fitness just weren't up to par.

I did a 10-15 minute warmup getting my heart up to zone 4 for a little bit and could tell it was going to be a rough night. My legs just felt heavy and the harder I pushed the more I wanted to slow down. Once I got to the line I felt slightly better, but after the first mile or so I was all ready feeling it. I concentrated on putting my head down, keeping my heart rate close to 175-180 and pushed on. I tried different cadence and everything, but it wasn't doing.

Roughly 1/3 of the way in, I was passed by an All 9 yards guy named Jerome and he was flying. Unfortunately for me, he was in the same class: Eddy Mercxx. The rules of the class are pretty simple- no aero gear and go as fast as you can. I figured I'd sign up for this one as I'd at least be up against guys with similar gear as I figured that it was about as likely for me to lose to them as the cat 4/5 guys with full aero rigs. I also figured there would be fewer people in this class. I know I was right on that count, I just need to see how I finished out overall to see if it was the right choice.

In any case, after Jerome passed me, I had sight of the woman in front of me and concentrated on realing her in. I managed to catch her about a mile after the turn and kept the gap opening further up. I can at least say I passed a person on a TT effort now. Of course that's still not worth much when you only average 20.7 mph for the effort. I hammered as much as possible fighting a slight head/mostly cross wind on the way back and crossed the line just about crosseyed and heaving like no other. At least I didn't feel like I left much out there.

I do need to check my seat height though as I felt like there was a disconnect with my positioning and leg extension. I really need to work on my core strength as well. I noted when I made the turn that my back/stomach/sides were all ready hurting due to the effort I was putting in to keep my upper body tucked and still. I also need to get some longer tempo rides in. 1 ride of 50 miles on the road thus far this year is definitely not enough to get my endurance where I want it. Gravel grinders don't do much other than prep you for a long ass slog in the saddle and pounding out some slow miles.

Overall I think I was almost a minute slower than my effort last year which had an average speed of almost 22 mph and was just shy of breaking 20 minutes. My goal this year is to break 20 minutes. I know it's easily in my grasp, I just need to put the work in to get there.

Info dump

As I've been pretty slow to write on a regular basis lately I figure I'll just dump a bunch of info all at once and get it off my plate.

Last Wednesday I opted out of the Ritual Ride and chose to do the Taco ride with the CITA boys. The trail was in pretty great shape with just a couple muddy spots and the requisite creek crossings. I managed to stay upright more often than not but still took a few spills including the coveted "first rider down" prize! I still need to work on my obstacle clearing skills as I always hang up on the chain rings on steep or large obstacles. I have yet to master hopping the rear tire up and over obstacles and am content with the seat jumping up and slapping me in the ass. I definitely need some help and work on that skill. Hell, I need work on all my skills...

This weekend found me slaving away on the yard work, friends visiting overnight, working, and a potluck with other friends. Friday night found us hosting some friends from out of town. They were headed to Adventureland with their kids on Saturday so we put out the invite to drive down the night before and stay overnight so they wouldn't have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn on Saturday. We had a few adult beverages, spent some time in the hot tub, and had some good conversation. As the evening activities were winding down around 1 in the morning, their youngest son sprinted upstairs and proceeded to get sick in the bathroom. Awesome job on having the ability to make it to the bathroom in a strange house! They were in for a long night with him being sick, but still made it to the park and had a good time on Saturday. It was great seeing them again, but dang we need to get our activities rolling earlier in the evening as anything past midnight is getting rough on this old man (LOL)!

Saturday was the first lawn mowing of the year. I was actually a week late on this due to our mower being out of commission. I tried last week to get the parts to fix it only to find out that all mower shops apparently close at 1 pm on Saturdays?! What the hell??? I'm guessing, I'm not in the minority by mowing my yard on the weekend and would halfway expect a mower shop to cater to their customers by at least being open until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Guess I lost that bet. In any case, the yard work got done, along with the brush cleanup and a couple of brews consumed. After dinner I hauled the load down to my parents farm and hung out with them for a few minutes before heading back home.

Woohoo, Sunday was going to be a banner day. 70 degrees and sunny meant I was in for some long hours on the bike. Alas, I wussed out. I awoke to mid 30's temps with slightly overcast skies and decided it wasn't to be. I opted for a couple hours extra sleep, a side of nookie, and getting an early start on the work I knew was looming in front of me. Yup, I spent most of my Sunday at work. I stayed there until 4 o'clock rolled around and we headed over to our friends grandma's house on the east side. She and her husband were in town from Arkansas with their son who is only 4 months younger than Corley. The kids played, the house was packed, and we had a good time hanging out with everyone. We rolled the weekend up with some relaxing in front of the tube.

Monday was a red letter day! I hit the DMCC Monday night ride for the first time this year as I opted out of Tuesday and Wednesday this week to do the Elkhart Time Trial on Thursday. I also chose to save gas and ride to the start plus I got the bonus miles in. Long story short, I logged almost 50 miles Monday night and though the numbers weren't very impressive in regards to average speeds or total climbing, I still felt pretty worked by the time I got home. Once home, the red letter day really started with some new toys having come in the mail from our friends at F&E. Actually, we only got one of the toys we ordered, but it was the one I was most looking forward to putting to use. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it! Overall it's a great toy and we'll probably be carrying it in the store, but didn't quite fulfill every fantasy I'd managed to conjure up about wild drapery tearing, paint peeling sex. I'm sure part of that was at least due to not getting started until somewhere nearing midnight as both of us had a busy day. We'll definitely be testing it more in the future though.

Damn, I think that catches me up to everything. Hope to see some of you soon.

TNWC #3

I know, I know, I'm pretty much a week late getting this post put together, but such is life. Actually, I'm shirking my work duties at the moment to put this together, but I'm sure I'll pay the time back in working late tonight and taking work home, so it's all good.

Last Tuesday was a great ride. I set a personal best, had an excellent ride, and managed to not feel like throwing up by the time I was done. The group was smaller than the previous one in which the accident occured. I can't really say it was any better behaved on the part of obeying all traffic laws, but at least we did more double file pacing in lieu of the mass swarm that I'm sure helped foster the accident the week before.

In any case, I was thinking all day about how not to get dropped on the climb past Cottonwood. I read on someone's training plan, blog, or somewhere that if you're a week climber, position yourself at the front and attack on the climb. As I all ready redline my heart rate going up that climb, I couldn't quite see how I could attack it any harder. However, by positioning myself at the front and hitting it just a shade earlier than everyone else, it allowed me to stay within the pack at the top of the climb. I was still totally gassed, but I now had people around to draft and recover with. I made it across the highway and through one set of S-curves before I was off the back again. I wasn't severely disappointed as it was still about the furthest I've made it thus far.

I had a few people off even before I went, so that made me happy in not being the first person off. I also was able to help pull them a little bit. The main group got stopped at the light in Ankeny and we were able to catch back up. As the light turned and we went, the pack strung out a bit. For some reason a number of the Pink Biker Chicks hit their brakes and pulled off into the elementary school at the north end of Ankeny. Not such a big deal, but the few of us towards the tail end had to slow and then were gapped off the main group which was accelerating away from us.

With no chance of catching them, I started to pull with one of the women I knew on the ride. We worked together to reel in Paul Black who I'm not sure was even on the TNWC ride, but happened to be in the right place at the right time. We started rotating pulls, but eventually lost Kristen off the back (sorry!) leaving Paul and I chasing one of the Rassy boys. We caught him and again started a pretty agressive 3 man rotation trading pulls every 30-45 seconds and hanging out with the tailwind and a draft!

Eventually, Paul and I started pulling away from the man in black and I was still feeling pretty springy. We made the turn on 142nd and still had a cross/tail wind at that point. We slowed slightly to let the other guy catch back on, but he wasn't able to hold it so we took off as two. Paul is an amazingly strong rider and I'm pretty sure he wasn't working nearly as hard as I was considering he's done RAAM and several UMCA events. We shot straight through the turn to Slater/Sheldahl and made the 40 mile loop. As we headed back south a nasty headwind greated us with gusto.

Pulls were again traded with Paul going longer up front as I was starting to weaken. Finally as we were almost to Camp Dodge I started to fall off, but Paul being the consumate drafting partner, soft pedalled long enough for me to hang on and recover just a bit. We split ways at Merle Hay as I headed back to the shop and my truck. It was at this point I knew it was going to be a fight to maintain my average speed. I hammered it as much as possible and somehow managed to keep my average at a new personal best. 20 MPH average for the 40 mile loop. I was stoked to say the least. Back at the truck I was tired, but happy and amazingly didn't hurt too much.

That's more like it

At least the weekend gave me some respite from the ball kicking. Well, there was an unfortunate incident with a level falling from it's perch and bouncing off my head on it's way to the ground, but considering I put it there, I'll take that as my own damn fault.

Friday night was a free night as little one was being swept away for the evening by Grandma L. After dropping the car seat by her place, I was off to the shop to hang out for a bit and just generally watch the goings on. The debate was still open on what we'd do with our free night, but we finally settled on dinner out and renting some movies as we just wanted a night to veg out. We ended up hitting The Market for a good dinner after we made a last minute diversion from our original choice of trying out a new BBQ joint. All was good at dinner with the exception of a stupid ass cashier not bothering to listen to the words coming out of my mouth. I ordered once only to have her gaze uncloud and ask me to repeat what I just said. After ordering the second time and paying, we hit the table to wait for our food. Alas, our food arrived, so who had the soup? Neither of us had the damn soup. But sir, here is what is on your ticket? Hmm, well they didn't bother to give me a ticket that said anything but the total. Oh, and now they wanted to charge me extra for what I actually ordered. I was pretty pissed by this point. Eventually the food delivery gal went up and put in the correct order. They sent a new gal out to deliver the corrected meal and a bill for an additional $7. Fuck it, I gave her the card and just grumbled to myself. At least the food was good. We parted with some leftovers and a selection of dessert to take home with us.

We ended up with a couple movies to watch- Juno and No Country for Old Men. The first was pretty funny and a good choice. The second had some definite cool parts, a decent plot line, but a stupid ending that just ruined the whole damn thing after such a long build up. It's like the writer got tired after cranking out such a long screen play and raised a white flag. Definitely a bummer. Miranda was actually pretty livid about it and ranted on the whole movie sucking for a decent amount of time which is pretty unusual for her. Good times!

Saturday we were greeted by sunny skies and all the appearances of a really nice day. I spent the morning lounging about the house for the most part with Miranda and Corley was still overnight with Grandma. I think we managed to get some chores done, but it was mostly about being lazy yet. The afternoon rolled around and I decided it was time for a ride. I knew the wind was supposed to be pretty wild, but I had no idea. Damn! I routed out a loop that would at least use the wind to propel me through some hilly spots and took off. As soon as I headed west into the wind, it was like I had bricks in my pockets. There was just no bucking it alone. So, I put my head down and started cranking. A turn into crosswind put me leaning into the wind just to stay upright. Finally a turn into the tailwind sent me sailing over hills at 20+ and across the flats at 30+. I was stoked for that scant 7 mile trek. Alas, I had to turn back north and eventually west again. That last 8-10 miles home sucked beyond belief. Rolling on the flats pumping hard to keep the speedo reading double digits just sucked with no other way to put it. Finally I hit home and felt a little worked over. I also managed to figure out a big bowl of pasta roughly 30 minutes before a ride is not good fuel for me. I work best on limited food before the ride for sure. The pasta sucked up a lot of my energy on the beginning of the ride and definitely didn't help me try to work in a few interval type efforts. Ughh!

Sunday was a whole different ballgame. We planned to help out some friends with a few chores that required two guys and then hang out for a cookout. One thing led to another and as we got our chores done, the beer drinking began and we spent the whole day at their place including dinner. As she is an awesome cook, dinner was pretty fabulous even if it wasn't anything fancy. They were happy with the work done, Corley was happy to play with her 3 friends, and we were happy to hang with good friends for a full day.

Wednesday ritual

I hit the Ritual ride again last night. It's quickly become my favorite group ride this year. There are enough people of different abilities that I can ride as hard or easy as I like and typically never end up riding alone. Someone said there were almost 50 riders last night! That's just awesome. There were also a lot more women last night making up the contingent which was also great to see.

We did our typical ride route with a split up for the faster group to do an additional loop through Water works park. That gave the other riders a chance to get out in front and have us catch back on. I think we caught them about the time we started the road portion of the loop. As usual, the two big hills created the separation again. There's one hill just before the turn off Maffit road and then another down by the soccer fields. Both are just long enough and hard enough that it really separates out the pack into a number of smaller groups. A small group rolled up to the stop light at 63rd street and took off from there to hit the bike trail again. We rolled pretty leisurely back to Ritual Cafe and waited for the rest.

Ritual graciously stayed open until 8 for our group and it was good to see people taking advantage of that fact by spending some money with those nice folks. After hanging out for about a half hour a few of us rolled up to A-Dong for a great dinner. I headed home about nine in the dark. I'm still pretty new to night riding so the novelty of it is great for me. My wife- not so much. She's definitely not happy if I'm riding in the dark. About my only thing I need to change is to pick up a stronger headlight. I'm all ready running a Planet Bike superflash on the rear, but the front light is a cheap lightweight unit that just gives me enough light to add some safety marking, but not really light the road. Another awesome Wednesday in the books!

A reminder for the few that actually read this- Race like a girl is starting tonight. I'm trying to head over early enough to help with registration, but I'll have my hands full with my daughter as well. I hope to see you there!

TNWC #2

Last night was my second run with the boys on the TNWC ride. The warm weather had people coming out in droves. I bet there was 50 riders minimum. As I showed up almost an hour early, I ran into Lou and was invited to meet up with some people at Grounds for Celebration to hang out a bit before the ride. I figured it would at least stretch my legs a bit so I tooled slowly up there and hung out with a few people. We rolled back down to the ride start in lieu of waiting for them to ride by and hopping on.

A huge pack headed out around 5:45 from Bike World on Merle Hay. From the sounds of it, the night might get interesting as Kim all ready was telling a tale of an angry motorist incident. I think the nice days bring out the idiots in swarms. We roll off and pretty much right away I'm pretty uncomfortable with the size, tightness, and attitude of the group. We're just stacked on top of each other and while it might just be my inexperience with racing, it seemed to me that it was a bit over the top. I know you have to stay close to draft, but the surging and slowing just seemed like it was begging for people to run into each other. I know I almost tagged a rear wheel and I was paying careful attention.

I made it to the top of the first sprint hill with the group and then lost it again. The problem is I hit almost my max heart rate (194 last night) by the time I crest the main hill and then we have a false flat all the way into Ankeny. I just can't get my heart rate back down enough to get any recovery in and by the time I do, the group has long since pulled away. So, as a repeat of the first ride, I was again first off the back of the group. At least this time a few others were spit out pretty close to the same time and I could keep my sites on them. Emily and Maria from Punk Rock Cycling were two of them and I caught them as we rolled into Ankeny. I figured it would be best to work together with them so we started trading pulls. One other rider showed up and we jumped on his wheel again working together to trade off. About that time we noticed the main peleton had stopped on the road about a mile north of town.

I was wondering what was happening and why they had stopped. The realization quickly set in that there was most likely an accident where someone was pretty hurt for the whole group to stop like that. Sure enough, as we rolled up and came to a stop, there were a few people gathered around a rider in the ditch. The bits and pieces I gathered were that the group antics from earlier had continued pretty much unabated and the result was predictable. A few crossed wheels, someone went down, and others were collected. There were some torn clothes, a bit of road rash, and a few minor looking cuts on a few guys, but the brunt of the crash fell on Kelli from Punk Rock Cycling. She appeared to have landed mostly on her left cheek and had a pretty good contusion from what I could see. Emergency services were called and seemed to take forever to show up. Amazing we were only a mile outside of town and I think the total time to get there was in the neighborhood of 10-15 minutes. Definitely too long in my book. Kelli got a one way ticket to the hospital and I haven't heard the final outcome. I'm not one for prayer, but she was definitely in my thoughts for the rest of the night and will be for a while. I hope she heals fast and is back on the bike very soon.

After the ambulance showed up, a few stayed back with Kelli, but the rest of the group took off in two main packs. I headed out with the second pack and got blown out another mile down the road with another rider. I tried to keep pace with him, but slowed and he pedalled off as well. I focused on keeping my heart rate in the 180-185 range and pegged it for the next hour. I could always see a rider or two out in front of me, but they never seemed to really get any closer. Finally, as we came back into the north side of Johnston, I was about to roll up on a couple guys. Of course I managed to catch a red light and they rolled off again. A few lights later though, my luck changed and I caught up. They were rolling a pretty leisurely pace cooling down as they headed back to the start. Good thing as I was out of gas by then. Another Tuesday night in the books.

Ritual riding

The first official ritual ride was last night. It's set up to be a no drop, relaxed pace, semi-social type of ride. I'm happy to say for the most part it was. With the exception of only a few of us knowing the entire route and a few sprints off the front that caused some chaos, it went pretty well.

For a first ride, the attendance was awesome to see. I'd say there were a good 20+ people that showed up to ride at 5:30. A brief hello and introduction from Jane at PRC and we were off. The route was to wind down to the bike path on MLK and through Waterworks to the Great Western Trail. We headed down the trail to Orilla (Bambino's Restaurant) and jumped back on the road. A quick left out towards Maffit reservoir and into some rollers. Here's where the sprint up the big hill led to confusion. We were supposed to hang a right on 42nd and Jane even made mention of it before we started.

The sprint group headed straight towards the reservoir. A number of us made the right turn and headed down towards Walnut Woods. I thought the rest of the group was close enough coming up the hill that they saw us turn. Unfortunately, they saw the sprint group and headed out towards the lake. This led to some back tracking back up the hill from Maffit and a little lost time.

The next separation came at the climb from the soccer fields just past Walnut Woods. At least this section of road had no turns so we held up at the stoplight crossing 63rd for what we thought was the main group. About 10 of us rolled as a group from there with no sign of anyone else coming up the stretch from the soccer hill. The group headed straight down McKinley to the bike trail in lieu of cutting over to Park. I'd say this was probably the safer choice as riding a group down Park for a mile around dusk is a sketchy choice considering the attention span of the typical driver on that stretch of road. We meandered our way back downtown and hit Ritual Cafe just as they were closing up.

Most of the group had peeled off and headed their own direction at this point. I was hoping that somehow we'd gotten to the back of the pack and everyone would be waiting at the cafe. Alas, we were the first group in and a few riders trickled slowly by until the last of the sweep showed up around 20 minutes later having gone back for a single rider and waiting for a flat tire to be fixed. All in all it was successful as nobody was dropped and all made it back alive!

I was trying my best to abide by this post from Lou's blog about going easy. I didn't look at my average heart rate when I was done, but I really tried hard to keep it under 150. A few hills definitely put me closing in on 180 due to switching to an 11-23 cassette and vowing to not use my triple up front, but in all it was pretty relaxed. A couple points along the ride I was pretty amazed at my perceived effort versus the speed we were cruising along. I'm hoping that bodes well for my base mileage getting me into summer riding shape as the miles start to ramp up.

That was fun?!

I decided to suck it up and show up to the TNWC ride last night. I really wasn't sure exactly what to expect considering I've never actually watched a bike race other than TDF and a few snippets of various races here and there. I've certainly never been in a race and only have minor experience with pacelines. It was time to jump in with both feet and I have to say I was definitely nervous about it.

It turned out to be a pretty decent sized group with 20-30 riders or possibly a few more. The rollout was pretty easy and I felt good as we headed out of Des Moines. The headwind we were expecting had pretty much died down and even though I was advised to just sit in and not take a pull, I did a very short turn at the front as I got shuffled up there. I actually felt pretty comfortable with being in the pack and was really concentrating on not making any stupid moves or creating gaps in the line.

Pete told me the first sprint was coming up and I braced for the worst. It wasn't so much a sprint as it was a HARD push up a pretty decent hill. I hit redline for the first time here with my heart rate shooting up to 193. I managed to stay on the pack without getting gapped and felt really good about that. We cleared the top of the hill and rolled to a quick stop sign where I got my breath back. It was to be short lived as we rolled into the south edge of Ankeny and though it didn't look like it, the grade was slowly rising and I fell further towards the back before getting spit out around mile 12. About the only cool thing was seeing one of the tri-riders (JJ?) in the back on his aero bars just hanging back and zinging right up to the tail of the pack with almost effortless ease. Damn that was cool.

I kept the pack in site for another mile or two as the gap opened up and finally lost site just north of Ankeny. Thinking ahead, I printed out the route so I knew roughly where we were headed. As I pulled out north of Ankeny I caught sight of a couple riders taking what appeared to be a shortcut on 125th Street to Polk City and I followed suit. I did my best to keep my pace and heart rate up in zone 4 without going much higher. While I didn't reel them in by any means, they didn't appear to get any further away. Just as I came up to the turn back south into Polk City I decided it was time for a sugar rush in the form of a Hammer Gel. I was wokring on squeezing it out as I made the turn and looked to my right.

Oh Shit! Here comes the peleton bearing down on me at full on ludicrus speed! I shoved the gel back in my bento bag and put the hammer down. I heard Pete yell out something about good job Rick as they road by and that was it. I cleared 30 mph chasing them and stayed with them for another mile, but they gapped me again and I was toast. The peleton rolled through yet another stop sign and it appeared the city cop in Polk City gave them a bit of warning as he flipped his lights on as they rolled past. I climbed out of Polk City and made the turn to the bridge. another rider shot past me just before the bridge and I hopped on his wheel. We bridged the gap to a third rider on the bridge. It was Sterling from Rassy's.

I figured he'd be as good as anyone to work together with for the ride back and slowed down. He was hurting and so was I by this point. He'd been one of the two riders I was chasing on the shortcut. We slowed our pace and rested a bit before I pushed us back up a bit faster and led us back into Johnston. We parted ways at the turnoff to Lower Beaver as I am comfortable with that route versus heading down Merle Hay on my own. I pushed harder once we split and kept my heart rate in the mid 170's. A few hills more and I was back on the return shot down Urbandale ave to the bike shop.

I rolled in just as the last few people were leaving. I was burnt toast at that point. My legs were fighting cramps, taking a deep breath put me fighting the urge to hurl, and my back was aching. I'll be back for more! At least tonight we have the Ritual Ride to recover.

I'm a tweener?!

Wow, twofer Monday! I figured it would be best to create this as a separate post since it really should be it's own topic. I had a recurring conversation and thought this weekend on the rides. After just getting into cycling last year, I've found myself smack dab in the middle of no-man's land. I'm a tweener. No, not that type of tweener, I don't crave a new cell phone, bedazzler, and a driver's license, I just don't quite fit with the local riding groups in town.

I started out as a typical recreational rider last year, got hooked, rode a metric shitload (over 3000 miles from May to December), and got faster. By the end of the summer I found most of the group rides I'd struggled to keep up with were now lagging behind me as I kept pushing myself to go farther and faster. Granted, I have absolutely no misconceptions that I'm anywhere near the speed of a typical cat 5 racer, but I'm not a huge fan of hurry up and wait either. So, the winter comes and I find myself invited along for some mountain biking rides with a group of racers. I'm enjoying pushing myself to redline and still falling way off the back, but it's fun. I have a new challenge. Now I'm out there tackling dirty centuries, getting stronger and having even more fun even in the midst of the hurt.

Now it's spring and I've got some base miles in, my fitness is fair to middlin' (about the same as mid-late summer last year), and I'm contemplating showing up to a few more of the "racer" type group rides. A simple Wednesday night recovery ride left me feeling pretty worked so I'm wondering what my actual abilities are. Was the ride harder than a recovery ride? Am I really that slow? How do I get faster? Do I want to race? How afraid am I of crashing?

All this leads me to realize, I'm right in the middle. I'm too competitive to enjoy riding below my threshold to keep with a slower group and I'm not sure I'm competitive enough to want to risk crashing in a race group not to mention spending more time working on getting stronger as well. I talked it over with a few different people on the rides this weekend. Racing sounds like a lot of fun and I'm most likely strong enough to not make a complete fool of myself in the Cat 5 class, but the few crashes I've had on the MTB this winter have left me with a pretty big aversion to going down hard on the road. So, what's a tweener to do????

As of right now, I'm looking more towards distance racing. The groups are much smaller, most packs stay pretty spread out, and it becomes more of a mental fortitude game along with the fitness aspect. I signed up for the Almanzo 100 since it sounded like a lot of fun. I'm looking to do a double century ride/race and I'm going to try to hang with anyone I can at the TNWC. I have no doubt that I'll find myself alone in the back at most, if not all, of these events, but it gives me something to shoot for. Any other tweeners out there? Chime in.

Weekend rewind

It was a good weekend.... I was able to get some time on the bike both Friday for Jane's birthday ride and ensuing activities and Saturday for a short ride with Lou doing an urban mountain bike assualt for an hour before meeting up with the DMCC group who were doing their first group ride of the year.

Friday was a pretty cool relaxed fun ride to celebrate Jane turning 30. We checked out the course for their upcoming duathlon series at Waterworks Park and rolled slowly around there to see what the spring flooding had done to the roads. There will definitely be some sketchy spots on the bike leg, but hopefully everyone makes it through rubber side down and shiny side up. We had a great dinner at A-Dong restaurant which I'd never been to before, but will definitely be back. Miranda and Corley met us at dinner to hang out and say hi along with showing off the "I'm a little punk" shirt that was modelled here last week. A short and brisk ride down to the Bike Kollective put us in a party mode with beer, wine, and snacks flowing. Met some new people and hung around taking everything in. Seems I'm a loner even in a crowd. I'm not sure why that is as I enjoy good conversation and typically do a reasonably passable job of holding my end up, but getting the topic going seems to be hard for me. So, more often than not, I'm like the kids back in the day that were expected to be seen and not heard. Hopefully my social ineptitude doesn't keep me from being invited out.

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a ride on Saturday when my phone announced I had a new message. Almost magically, my plan came together with an invite to take on the urban obstacles on mountain bikes at 7:30. I figured out I could hit that ride and still sneak over to get more mileage with the DMCC group while getting a workout on the MTB. For the 2 of you that read this blog, you'll remember I got my ass kicked by a simple concrete curb a couple weeks ago so I was still a bit hesitant on hitting things up. Lou and I were on mountain bikes while the other two showed up on cross bikes sighting that keeping up with Lou is next to impossible when riding equal gear. Luckily we were running a pretty relaxed pace and just played around for the hour I hung out with them.

The DMCC ride was a pretty small group due to the colder weather... Hmm, seems 32 degrees qualifies as too cold to ride for a number of folks. Ahh well, more road and trail for me to enjoy! I knew a few people on the ride and chatted them up along with some of the newcomers as we made our way down to Martensdale at a pretty relaxed pace. I'm definitely glad I was on the mountain bike as I could work a little at the pace we were running and Warren county managed to FUBAR the trail by starting spring clearing last week without brooming the brush back off the trail. Somehow everyone managed to avoid flats, but I was having fun busting through the brush and hopping sticks. A brief fuel stop in Martensdale and we were back on the road. I stayed with the group until we regrouped at Cumming and then I just kept my pace steady from there and everyone melted back.

Sunday left us having some family time. We took Corley to hang out at the Science Center for a while. She always has a blast playing down there. We renewed our family membership for the year as well. A lot of playing hard led to a good nap and I have to say I partook of the nap time as well dozing off while the Nascar race was on. Last night led to some much needed cleaning and maintenance on the road bike. I tore it down to the frame and crankset (I didn't have the right crank removal tool). Everything got a cleaning and wax, I put some snazzy new silver bar tape on, new brake pads, and even adjusted the cabling since I had also installed a new 11-23 cassette and chain. All in all, a good weekend.

Twice as nice

The actual spring like weather the past couple of days inspired some time on the bike. After last week's time off and the fiasco's of this weekend, it was nice to jump on and go.

Monday was a nice 2 hour hard effort down the Great Western trail and back. I fought some decent headwind most of the way down and took salvation when it would turn slightly cross wind. At some points I was struggling to maintain double digit speeds, but I soldiered on. With about 17 miles on the clock I decided it was time to head back and fairly well flew home. Flew might be a little strong as I cooked my legs by the time I reached city streets and fairly well suffered up the hills back home fighting the headwinds as I turned back south again. Overall a great ride and my knees were in agreement with the effort put forth.


Sorry for the stock photo, but it's about all I have of our elusive tandem. We decided to break it out for the first time this year last night. After a bit of a rocky start considering I had to switch out pedals to my new crank brother smarties, we were off. With the wind being beyond breezy yesterday, I opted out of an out of town route and kept it completely urban. This really was a great choice. We rolled into downtown and swung by the orphanage's new project, the bike kollective. Alas, there were a couple bikes hanging out in the front of the shop, but the lights were off and nobody was home.

From there we rolled down Grand to see if anyone was at Ritual and it too was deserted of bikes. I remembered that the local TNWC was now in full swing so most everyone would probably be out there. I will make my way out there one of these days to see how badly I can get shelled. We jumped up to Ingersoll to make a pit stop at Zanzibars coffee and have a nice little warm-up. Miranda's ears were hurting pretty well at this point due to the wind so she enjoyed the time off. Our route back home was a bit more scenic with a jog through Gray's Lake, up through Mcreay Park, and then back home. There's definitely some work to be done with the secondary motor on the tandem, but considering it was her first ride since Cranksgiving I'll cut her a little slack....

In other news, we stopped by Rassy's on Saturday and picked up our "Little Punk" t-shirt for our own little punk. Here's a few of her modeling the goods.



Thanks to DQ and all the gals over at Punkrock Cycling for making these up. We'll definitely be out to some of their events to cheer them on this year.

Conspiracy theory

I think the world is conspiring against me to keep me off my bike. From my crash last week, to cold temps, to busy schedules, and mechanical failures, they all came together in a perfect storm to keep me to a scant 2 mile journey in the last week.

I did purposely stay off the bike to give my shoulder a chance to heal up a bit. I think my chiropractor was able to afford moving to his new office in part due to my crash habits. My shoulder is starting to feel better as I apparently pulled about every major muscle in my left shoulder/neck area when I landed on the pavement. I still can't sleep on that side which sucks slightly and bearing weight where it pulls on the bone/joint itself is pretty sketchy as I still have some shooting pains. While the weather was nice several nights, I stayed away from the bike in hopes of saving it up for this weekend. I even had a group lined up to ride on Sunday morning.

Of course, the weather would stick it right up the arse on Sunday with cold temps, wind, and some snow the night before. Normally I wouldn't let this stop me considering I soldiered through most of the winter in far worse conditions. However, with it being a road ride and most everyone else bailing on the ride, I put together a strategic decision to call it early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, Steve didn't get my messages as his phone was dead. He still toughed out a good 20 miles while I wussed out in a nice warm bed.

Finally, my bikes were being temper mental over the weekend. On Saturday I was planning a nice ride to run some errands, check out my new knock-off camelback, and swing by the bike kollective. I dressed up to the nines in all my bike gear and headed out to the garage to grab my road bike. Both tires were pretty low on air due to being filled with CO2 from double flatting on my last ride. I pumped some air into them and fished around for a couple things in the back of my truck. A loud pop sounded through the air and my rear tube let go. Hmm, that was odd. I pulled the tube out to find the hole and see if there was something sticking in the tire. A small rock had worked it's way through the tire and rubbed a small hole in the tube. So, fast forward to me replacing the tube only to find a tear in the sidewall of the tire. Shit, time to scrap the plans of riding the road bike. I change out shoes quickly and wheel the mountain bike out. As I take off for the post office I glance at the rear wheel. It's wobbling like no other! Damn, I must have tweaked it when I crashed last week. I would have figured the front tire would have been the one to get trashed, but apparently when the bike landed sideways it nailed the back wheel. I made a strategic decision to ride only to the post office and back getting in my whopping 2 miles.

Figuring it was a lost cause to ride, I headed over to the shop to pick up a new rear tire and true the rear wheel from the mountain bike. Sweet, the place was pretty empty when I pulled in. Lou was in there putting his new ride together as well as Pete tweaking his ride. Even the sickly Squirrel stopped by with his wife and little one. Pretty soon the shop was filled to the brim with people. I stood around for a bit before figuring I was more in the way the anything else so I headed back home. I picked up a pair of the new Michelin Pro Race 3 tires after contemplating going to something a bit more hardy for a brief moment. We trued the wheel as best possible which still has some wobble to it. Luckily I'm running disc brakes so it doesn't matter a lot.

I did take some time to do a little maintenance once I got home. I put the new rear tire on the road bike and inspected the front to see if it needed changed as well. All looked good on that front so I kept it on and gave the chain a little lube. As soon as we get some of this damn grit off the road, I'll be treating it to a nice new SRAM 9 speed chain considering this one is closing in on 4000 miles all ready. The mountain bike got some much needed TLC as well. I put the new wheel on and then commenced to figuring out why my disc brakes were rubbing. The setup was definitely off. I'd never really checked them after buying the bike. I did notice on my last hundy that the front wheel had some definite drag on it though. It took a good 15 minutes, but now they're running drag free and rolling much more nicely.

Damn, what a weekend.

Hey y'all watch this...

I'm beginning to think I should change my screen name. After Sunday's ride, it seemed fitting that I should change it to something like the title of this post. I think my purpose of riding is starting to be humor for other participant in this sport. I know accidents, bumps, and bruises are pretty much inevitable along with flats, broken parts, and maintenance.

I'm hitting all of the above, but I think I'm hogging more than my fair share. Today was no exception to that rule. I even elicited a comment of "hey go first, you're more fun to watch." This was after my double gainer over the handlebars of my mountain bike before we even hit the singletrack. I was following the group up to the entrance to Denman's woods and prepared to hop the curb back onto the short section of pave trail. Not being the most adept at riding yet, I managed to misjudge the speed I was travelling at and pulled up way to early. Upon my front tire returning to earth, it was immediately confronted by the front of the curb. Apparently it was completely surprised by this turn of events and decided the best course of action would be to stop its forward momentum post haste. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't informed of this executive decision and haven't perfected instantaneous reversal of my own personal heft. I.E. I flipped my ass straight over the bars, landing head and should first onto the pavement. Apparently I hit with enough force that several riders in front cringed just from the noise.

Everyone stopped and returned to my wallowing about on the sidewalk to see if I was injured. After loosing a small stream of obscenities that really didn't do my current state of feelings justice. I regained my feet. Inspecting my helmet led to finding two cracks in it. Scratch another helmet for the season. I was all ready onto my second helmet after lawn darting straight into a tree last December. About the only redeeming quality is the ability to brag about cracking a helmet and that the current model I have is on clearance. I'm debating about buying a stock of them...

As of this writing, I'm feeling a little banged and bruised. Strangely enough, my head appears to be hard enough to not be affected in the least. My wife won't be surprised by that fact. However, my shoulder took a nasty hit and currently has a chunk of road rash on top of my shoulder blade. My jersey wasn't damaged in the least, but I somehow managed a nice welt and rash. I also managed to take a couple small bites out of my achilles apparently from a rogue pedal seeking revenge at the same time.

The rest of our ride was mostly uneventful, but enjoyable. I took one small spill attempting a log climb as my rear tire spun out. There were some icy spots on the trail, some new routing due to recent flooding, and the ground was spongy sucking a lot of energy to ride through.

Sucking it up- a reflection

I was recently reading a post on bike forums asking about nutrition for a hard century. Curious to see what the actual question was and the corresponding answers, I clicked on the topic. As I perused the original post, it stuck in my head that completing most any long ride, especially century distance, is way more mental than physical. Sure you need to have some bike skills and I wouldn't necessarily recommend just picking up one day and deciding to ride your bike 100 miles, but I think it's something that could be completed in a day by just about any halfway and probably some less than fit people.

In any case, this particular post mentioned that he'd gotten 85% done with the ride and bailed because he just didn't have the energy to go on. I was wondering just how hard this century must have been. So, like any good netophile, I looked up the ride, found the rating for it, and noted that it had about the same difficulty as the two road centuries I'd ridden last year and not as hard as the gravel ride we did this weekend if you look purely at the climbing stats. If you throw in the gravel and mountain bike aspect, this weekend's ride probably is something that would rank as "extremely difficult" by the scale that was used.

But, back to my original thought. I think the biggest hurdle is as Squirrel put it, to "suck it up". I'm new to the biking scene having been here for less than a year, but it just seems to me that there's a ready excuse around every corner of why you didn't complete a ride or possibly even start it. I guess I shouldn't expect much different as that sentiment is echoing day to day life more than ever these days. So why is it that the general population is slowly becoming more and more "pussified"?

My question really was generated as I was browsing the bargain books at Costco last night and happened across "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson. It was a book I'd been meaning to read for a while. I'd read "In a Sunburned Country" a few years back in preparation for our trip to Australia and found it extremely entertaining. I figured this one had to at least be close. For the bargain price of $4.95 I figured I wouldn't be out much either way. I cracked it open to prattle off a few pages before bed and 150 pages and several hours later, I figured I'd better turn in or risk not being able rise at all for work.

The story is about hiking the Appalachian Trail in the eastern United States. My overall thought was that as a whole, the general public is becoming further and further displaced from the outdoors. We're content to distance ourselves with every creature comfort known to man. Now, I'm all for air conditioning, heating, video games, and enclosed spaces as much as the next guy, but you've got to step away from those things once in a while and get a little nature back under your skin.

I consider myself pretty lucky in regards to my upbringing. I wasn't some spoiled kid with all the toys and there were certainly things we didn't have, but I had the opportunity to play outside and learn to enjoy the great outdoors through hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and scouting. I think a lot of those activities played a role in shaping my personal attitudes and beliefs. I learned self reliance and perseverance. I was able to roam free without the worry of being lost in an urban jungle. I'm well aware that our world is changing and even in the scant few years that have passed since my adolescence it seems the world has become more dangerous and the opportunities are shrinking for people to get "out there".

Almost anyone that gets to know me for any period of time has talked to me about doing something in the outdoors. It's a latent passion for me. I never really put my finger on it until now, but being outside is what I like. I just find activities that get me out of the house and put my energy into those activities. I almost typically end up inviting friends to come join me fishing sometime or to come down to my parent's farm and go camping. Strangely enough, few people have taken me up on the offer, but I'm always hopeful.

Funny how topics just ramble on from a seemingly small start point. I guess to try and put a wrap on this one I just need to remind you to get out there, suck it up, encourage your kids to step back from the electronic leashes, and be a part of rediscovering what life is and should be about.

Have a cold one

It was another beautiful day in the neighborhood this weekend. I've been watching the temps and wondering what the next gravel slog might be like with the reports of how terrible the gravel conditions are around the state. With one of the snowiest winters all ready on the books and the snowiest February ever, it wasn't looking promising. The forecast for cold weather this weekend intrigued me. Cold on Friday with an overnight low plummeting to near zero should ensure hard packed frozen gravel that would be great for a ride.

Now who in their right mind would be crazy enough to head out with me. Strangely enough, I wasn't alone in my thinking that a frozen and cold ride would trump riding the mud any day. One of the gravel crazies from the January ride I missed was all ready deep into his planning for a new route this weekend. Originally, he was shooting for a Sunday ride so all I had to do was change his mind on that little tidbit and we were set to go. It looked like it would be he and I with the possibility of Fuller joining us for the full route and maybe a couple others for a shorter ride. Alas, it would just be us two brave souls headed into the wild on Saturday morning.

The temperature was a balmy 5 degrees above zero when we left the comfort of the Hy-Vee Grocery store. The one thing I noted was that even though it was cold, I wasn't. A number of people all ready made the comment to me that I was nuts for riding Saturday due to temperature alone. In my mind, the temperature was the reason to ride.

I was dressed about as perfectly for the conditions as could be expected. I'd actually overheated a fair amount on the last ride so I left my clothing choices the same thinking I'd be in good shape for this ride and I hit the nail on the head. My gear choices were as follows: winter weight under armour base layer, hammer nutrition bibs, smartwool medium cushion snowboard socks, pearl izumi amfib bibs, nashbar siberia winter jersey, shimano winter riding shoes with stick on toe warmers in the toes, pearl izumi wind and waterproof jacket, performance windproof microfleece balaclava, and a pair of waterproof snowboard gloves from Menards.

The above combination of clothing with the exception of the shoes and socks has been my riding staple this winter. The shoes, socks, and toe warmers, definitely have the nod for anything over a few hours out in below freezing weather. Unless I'm standing still, I've never gotten overly cold. For the most part, I've got my vents, jacket, and jersey unzipped at least partially as I'm sweating like crazy. One other thing I added based on a recommendation from Dennis Grelk, are my handlebar covers. I started with them and my heavy gloves for this ride and by mile 20 I was ready to switch into my lightweight mechanics gloves.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming... Tom and I rolled out a few minutes past 7 from the confines of West Des Moines. We quickly left the trappings of suburbia and hit the gravel within a few short miles of the rollout. From there we wandered our way south to Booneville and on to a short stretch of pavement before heading south once again. Somewhere in this stretch from Booneville to Winterset at mile 27 we hit some of the hardest parts of the ride. There was a sustained 19-20% grade hill that rose for about 1/2 mile and a level B road that hadn't apparently got them message that the snow was supposed to be mostly gone by now.



The level b road was the only spot we had to get off and hike because of the snow pack and drifts. We kept breaking through the hard crust of the snow and the drifts ranged up to roughly 5 feet deep at the worst spot. Luckily we could push around the drift and didn't have to break trail through it.




I also noted that my bike seemed a bit "loose" going down some of the hills in this stretch. A brief inspection led me to believe my cones holding the axle may not have been tight enough. Strangely I couldn't recreate the problem on Sunday when we checked it at Squirrel's. It may have been something as simple as a slightly loose skewer, but it was unnerving to say the least. Having the bike move more than you're anticipating when bombing down ice and snow packed gravel is not something I'd recommend unless you really like that clamped down puckered up feeling!

We hit Winterset with little fanfare and made our way to Kum & Go for some calories. I decided to be a bit daring and hammered down some pure sugar in the form of a couple Krispy Kreme donuts. Tom played it more safely with the breakfast burrito.



A scant 15 or 20 minutes later and we were back on the road. With Tom and I matched pretty evenly for pace, our plan was to keep moving and minimize our stop times. We rolled back south out of Winterset and into more hills. Thus far we'd had some nice hilly running, but it had been interspersed with a few minor flats as well. Now we were well into hill country. Winding our way south and west towards Pammel park, we were still fighting a headwind out of the south. It definitely had picked up more of a bite since we stopped for breakfast.

A mile or so before we crossed the next highway, we had a hitch hiker join up with us in the form of an overly friendly farm dog. Usually it's an all out sprint to avoid certain dogs or at the least some stern words to ward off impending doom. This happy fellow was feeling his oats and enjoyed running next to and up in front of us. As we came up to the highway crossing, we really didn't want him following any further. It took us a good 5 minutes of hollering and yelling at him just to get him to stay put as we barrelled down the road. He gave a brief chase, but we'd all ready opened a gap and he gave up pretty quickly. Hopefully he made it back home without any harm.

We were soon into new territory as neither of us had ridden the roads west of the park. Part of the route was scavenged from the upcoming "ridges of madison county" ride that is taking place later this month. We hoped the "ridges" implied that we'd be coming out of the river valley and riding on top of the hills for a while. This was partially right.... We did right up and out of the valley, only to descend right back into it, rinse and repeat for the next 30 miles. As we approached a sign that simply stated "Hills" we knew it was going to be fun. The saving grace to this section was that we turned north and now were taking as much advantage of the tailwind as possible.



Somewhere in the extreme southwest corner of our route, we missed a turn. It very well could have been the level B road that we both scoffed at possibly being the "correct" route, but either way, we wound a bit further south than was shown on the route map. A strategic decision was made to turn north and search for the next known east-west numbered road on our route map. We handily found it and then worked our way to the next major north-south road on our journey. Tom was started to feel a bit shelled out at this point and the route we had planned gave us an easy out to cut off about 7 miles of our trip putting us down to 100 even. Seeing as I could stand to be home early and Tom was feeling a bit weary, we decided to cut the route off and cut straight north to I-80.

The only downside to this planning was we were also cutting off our planned lunch stop in Stuart. We knew there was another town just east of Stuart that we should run almost directly into, but for the life of us, we couldn't remember the name. Luck was on our side though and we easily found the little town of Dexter with no problem. I stretched my legs and hammered out this section with the wind pushing pretty hard at my back. Big ring and 20+ MPH were the name of the game for a few miles as I motored off the front. At our designated turn, I waited for Tom to catch back up and we eased in to Dexter.

Casey's was the name of the game in Dexter. We strode in like we owned the place and made ourselves as home. The two guys working the register were pretty amazed at our tail of gravel and century rides in the middle of winter. I'm sure they thought we were nuts, but they accepted we were doing what we wanted and made us feel welcome as we stripped a few layers off and settled down for some lunch. We stopped for roughly 40 minutes and hit the door about 2:40 with 67 miles all ready under our belts.

The next stretch of road led us to Adel and I really don't remember much of that road. I suppose one gets a bit jaded after hitting 4000+ feet of climb in a scant 60 mile jaunt. I do remember we passed a nice lake with a park called "Beaver Lake" and then made our turn east to head into Adel. We were treated with our next surprise on this leg. The south wind had turned slightly west and now was blowing us towards home once again. Our pace really picked up in this stretch with a quartered wind and very minimal climbing compared to the morning. We hit Adel in no time flat. Another stop at Casey's to suck down a donut and to check the map.

The route out of town looked pretty straight forward. We had 15 miles to get home including a short jog on highway 6. As we headed out of town, we noted the route we were supposed to use included a long since closed bridge over the river. Luckily the paved bike trail runs parallel to the road and has a converted railroad bridge. We jumped on the trail and BAM! Wouldn't you know it, I went down on a ridge of ice. My left hip and helmet took the brunt of the fall. I distinctly remember the sound of my helmet scraping across the snow and the crunching noise it made. The only casualty beyond a slightly bruised hip (yet again), was a small tear in one of my vaunted handlebar covers. I hopped back on the bike and just past the bridge we found a short trail that took us to our gravel road again.

This push seemed to take much longer in my head. We hit some headwinds again as we had a few south spots to ride, but for the most part it was quartered tail again. We hit the edge of Waukee and the pavement around 5:50 and celebrated with a brief picture stop. Tom soon parted directions with me to meet up with his family as I hobbled back to my truck another mile down the road. I had to ride one loop around the store as I got there to finish with 100.3 miles. Another century down! Only 10 more to go.

A long slog in the saddle

Saturday was my first century of the year. It definitely won't be my last, but it will stick in my memory for quite some time and probably help me make it through other long rides. My morning started off with a jolt about 3:30 AM waking up thinking I'd overslept. I took a peak at the clock and realized I had another hour before the alarm would actually have to get me up. Around 4:40 I rolled out of bed and was thankful I'd spent an hour prepping all my gear the night before so everything was in it's prescribed place and ready to roll.

A quick text from Squirrel acknowledged we were indeed on for the ride. I was bummed about missing the first installment of his gravel centuries, but soon I'd be making up for that. I was excited and more than a bit nervous, but I figured I should do all right in making it through the ride. I had no bail out plan as the wife was working and I volunteered to drive Dennis and Squirrel to the start. I picked up the boys around 5:20 and we headed off for breakfast at Hy-Vee. We were a bit early, so we sat and enjoyed a pretty leisurely breakfast. A little too leisurely on my part as I needed to transfer my backpack gear over to a borrowed seat post rack and mount my handlebar covers. I was about 5 minutes slower than the rest of the group getting ready to roll. Hmmm, an omen of things to come for the day?

We rolled out about 7:15 into some damn chilly temps hovering near the single digit mark. I was pretty thankful for my handlebar covers, but my choice of lightweight gloves to start with left my fingers a bit numb until the blood got flowing about 20 minutes later. I felt great for about the first 30 miles and rode pretty much with Dennis who was riding fixed gear in a pretty damn tall gear to boot! Once we hit 30 miles I started noting little things to fix at the lunch break- seat post height and saddle position were the biggies. I hadn't ridden this bike over 30 miles and only had it for 6 weeks or so, so this was it's first real test.

Lunch found me rolling slowly off the back of the pack and keeping company with Sumpter on his 26'r fixie. At least I wasn't alone, yet.... We hit the lunch stop with a shade over 40 miles in. I still felt pretty good at this point, though my IT band was starting to ache. I was reasonably confident I'd be good for the rest of the ride. An hour or so later, we rolled out of the sports bar with our stomachs full on tacos, chocolate milk, and whatever else we could scarf down.



As soon as we cleared the edge of town I knew I was in deep shit. I was leading the rollout south out of town with the others lined up behind and the headwind showed up. We only had a mile or less on the paved road before we turned back west and found the roads had started to thaw during our luxurious lunch break. I figured my best bet was slow and steady so I geared down, pushed easy and focused on keeping my heart rate manageable. Of course this led to my first way off the back experience of the ride and definitely made me start questioning whether or not the full 110 was a wise decision. Too late now!

At the first south turn on X avenue, the group was patiently waiting for me. I rolled up and they announced a pace line which was for my benefit I'm sure. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have enough gas left in my legs to even keep up to the tail of the line. Fuller and I slowly worked off the back again and I fell even further back. I geared clear down to my granny gear up front and put the rear cassette near the middle. The ground was mostly flat, but the combination of soft roads and headwind near 15 miles per hour kept my pace somewhere around 6-7 mph.



I began to formulate my drop plan on this stretch of road. Hopefully, I'd catch up with the rest of the boys somewhere (I knew they'd be waiting somewhere along the route), I'd hand off my keys to Squirrel or Dennis, and hunker down for a long ass haul to make it back. I remember joking as Squirrel pointed out my granny gear that X Avenue should be renamed to XXX avenue because it sure screwed me like no other. Little did I know that Squirrel was pretty serious when he said no one gets dropped on these rides.



The guys took off again and I kept plodding along until they were no longer in site. Somewhere in this stretch I stopped to stretch on the side of the road, snagged part of a bar, and took off the handlebar covers. The temps had warmed to the low 30's and even with lightweight gloves, it was too hot to keep my hands from sweating. I was treated to some more sludge on this route, but finally caught site of the guys waiting for me at a quaint little church in the middle of nowhere. A brief photo op of me smiling through the pain and we were off again headed to Perry.



This stretch treated us to the worst of the roads yet. I saw my first spot where Dennis had to hike a bike and cleared the top of the hill around 3 mph myself. Definitely not having much fun at this point, but I didn't have many other choices. I started thinking about the route sheet and how it noted a shortcut that knocked off about 7 miles by bypassing the stop in Perry. I really was considering it until I rode back up on Sumpter who either was waiting for me or not fairing any better than I at that point. My opportunity was lost as we took the road on in to Perry.



As we hit the edge of town, I was never happier to see blacktop or any other form of paving for that matter. My mood instantly picked up as my speed did. We found the rest of the boys hiding at a local watering hole. Some time was spent here evaluating the remaining 40 miles considering it was now 4 PM and we had to ride back through some of the same slog we'd just come from. Fuller called it a day and bummed a ride home from his wife. He offered me one as well, but something told me to trudge on even if I didn't make it for the full ride.



As we headed out of Perry the boys stopped for some chow at the Casey's. I was chided a bit for not joining in the grease fest of pizza and whatever else was available. Smart move on my part, but I'd later succumb and suffer for it. The only real redeeming quality for the next 20 miles was that we had a decent amount of north riding and east riding. We finally rolled into Woodward around 6 PM as dusk was really settling in. Another stop at the Casey's for lights, blinkies, gear change, and for me two slices of pizza. Note to self that I won't suffer that mistake again! As good as they tasted sliding on down, I suffered the next hour as they churned their way through my stomach. Uggh!

The roads were now pretty firm and our speeds were back into the double digits. I was even keeping up with the group or they slowed down as to not drop me again. I'm not sure which was the true case, but I was excited for the company and to be making a better pace. My knee was still hurting and I'd been chugging ibuprofen like Pez at every stop. It was now starting to get cold enough that my joints were getting some relief. Somewhere along the route I saw two deer fly across the road about 20 yards in front of me.

One final stop in Granger left us with 10 scant miles to home. I did a little victory dance in my head as we rolled 100 miles just after leaving town. For some reason I had it in my head that we'd have to transverse the single level B road again in the dark. The road itself wasn't bad, but it had icy drifts on it that made me a little nervous in daylight as I slipped around a bit even then. I was pretty sure I'd be going down if we had to do it at night. As luck would have it, we'd long since passed that stretch of road as it wasn't on the return route. This section would have the only near crash of the day as Sumpter went on a wild hop, skip, and jump after crossing up in some frozen ruts. The road definitely sucked in that respect.

Finally, we hit street lights, pavement, and the edge of civilization. My legs picked up some much needed energy from being so close to home. Of course this leg also led us to the only assholes of the ride who honked and made a comment or two. I guess most Iowans just don't expect a bunch of cyclists out on the roads at night in the middle of February, who knew?! At least we were all well lit (and we had lights on too).... We finally hit the Hy-Vee around 8:15 and tossed our bikes back in the truck. After hobbling around in the warmth of the store for a few minutes we emerged with our spoils of victory for the day- protein drinks, ice cream, brownies, and my own little treat of a lemon parfait.

Great day, great ride, and a lot of learning done. Time for more gravel goodness is definitely in the cards for this year so stay tuned.