speed drills...

another night of speed drills on the trainer... getting through my last week of this base period, one more night at the gym, one more night at the gym, then hopefully a couple of rides this weekend if the weather co-operates. my body is feeling good, a little bit fatigued, but that's probably from a couple of late nights working on websites. i'm looking forward to my rest week next week and reminding myself that this work will pay off in the summer.

between training and trying to eat better, i've dropped a little over 20 pounds from the beginning of the year... if nothing else carrying 20 pounds less weight up the hills should help my riding this summer. the weight loss has slowed a bit now, but with the amount of training going up it's not good to be losing a lot of weight from here on in.

another long road ride on sunday if the weather allows... 60+ miles starting from pierce mill in rock creek park... if anyone is interested in coming along, get in touch so we'll know who to wait for... the ride is pretty casual, so everyone can ride their own pace with some stops to regroup.

trying to get an early night tonight and get a good nights sleep...

beware the bike ninja...

a little too cold for the columbians at paris-nice?

bikes and (home)brews

2 great rides... mountain bike on saturday, road bike on sunday... first tracks in week old snow at greenbrier, riding the usual trails backwards to mix things up and trying out some trails i've never ridden. early in the year so i'm trying my best to keep the heart rate low, even if it means seeing the rest of the ride disappearing over the horizon every time the road or trail heads upward. planned to bottle my helles lager, but i realized i didn't have any sanitizer to clean up the bottles so matt and i hung out, tried a couple of home brews and watched a bit of office space... time to dry hop the double IPA...

the sunday road ride group grew a bit this week... makes the ride a lot more fun to have more people along. mike had the pedal threads strip on one of his crank arms 45 minutes into the ride. luckily we were close to a metro stop when he noticed so he didn't have to pedal one-legged all the way back. as we were finishing up the ride we passed him in rock creek park, so i guess he got the problem sorted out.

norba nationals start this weekend...

i'm junkie for this kind of behind-the-scenes info for just about anything that i'm into. so with the first norba national taking place this weekend in texas, here are a couple of columns written, semi-regularly, by pro team mechanics... know any others?

Chris Davidson - Shimano Multiservice Zak Vestal - Trek VW

richard branson's cycling career

i was just reading through the bio of richard branson that i link to in the last post and i came across this rather unusual parenting technique...

My youngest sister Vanessa's earliest memory is being woken up in the dark one January morning because Mum had decided I should cycle to Bournemouth that day. Mum packed some sandwiches and an apple and told me to find some water along the way.

Bournemouth was fifty miles away from our home in Shamley Green, Surrey. I was under twelve, but Mum thought that it would teach me the importance of stamina and a sense of direction. I remember setting off in the dark, and I have a vague recollection of staying the night with a relative. I have no idea how I found their house, or how I got back to Shamley Green the next day, but I do remember finally walking into the kitchen like a conquering hero, feeling tremendously proud of my marathon bike ride and expecting a huge welcome.

'Well done, Ricky,' Mum greeted me in the kitchen, where she was chopping onions. 'Was that fun? Now, could you run along to the vicar's? He's got some logs he wants chopping and I told him that you'd be back any minute.'

around the world in 80 3 days

steve fossett is just a couple of hours away from completing a 3-day solo non-stop flight around the world without refueling... don't know how i missed this one, as i hadn't heard of it untill someone mentioned it yesterday... burt rutan - of voyager and space ship one fame - designed the single engined jet aircraft that he's flying and the project is being financed by richard branson and virgin... pretty cool stuff when you think about it...

feedburner

i've set up feedburner to handle syndication of my site... don't know if anyone uses the feed, but the old feed will still work, but you should use the feed now...

hours...

after wakefield trailwork yesterday and a trip to citybikes i was pretty wasted... forced myself to get onto the trainer and spun for a little under an hour while i watched monty python and the holy grail... decided to make up for it with a bit of extra time on the road bike today, should have been 3 hours but i figured i'd push it up to 3:45 or 4:00 to make up for the 2 and 1/2 hour mountain bike ride i didn't do in saturday.

hooked up with mike and tris at 11 and we headed north up through rock creek park heading up towards falls road. once we hit falls mike and i hit some of the back roads to get in a few more miles and more some climbing while tris took a flatter route to our rendezvous point a couple of miles away... after a quick pit stop for coffee we started heading back into the city on macarthur... it's pretty flat, so it was easy to keep my heart rate down and get in some good zone 2 miles, especially when i could tuck in behind mike... by the time we got back down to georgetown we had a bit over 3 hours of riding in so i doubled back up the capital crescent and over to rock creek park for a few more miles... by the time i got home the stats added up to 60 miles in 4:15 with 2000+ feet of climbing... my legs are pretty wasted, so hopefully i didn't overdo it...

we'll probably be doing a similar route next weekend, so let me know if you're interested in coming along... with the optional bits of the ride it could range from 35-60+ miles...

dilemma

spring trailwork kicks off this weekend with major work at wakefield... this is the start of a complete rebuild of the trails, so it's a big deal and this is a very heavily used park. volunteered to be a crew leader for the work sessions, so i'm off there this afternoon to get some training from IMBA trail guru rich edwards so that i don't end up telling people the wrong things tommorow... there's an event that i'm missing this weekend, it would have been fun, but i'd already said i was in for this before i realized the conflict so i'm going to stick with it...

anyway it's time for me to start building up the bike karma for next year... and to those of you doing something somewhere, have fun...

swill

back from work and jump on the bike for a speed skills session on the trainer... an hour of one-leg pedaling and spin ups. off the bike, quick bite to eat, then onto the beater singlespeed to head down to RFD to meet up with the tuesday swill ride... less riding and more swilling for me since i skipped the ride in from falls church and just had a quick ride from home down to chinatown... DT, spearmint, and stoner were a couple beers ahead of me by the time i got there... had a couple of dogfish head beers and hung out for a bit... followed the other guys back to georgetown and then hit rock creek park for the last couple miles home.

riding home through adams morgan i started bottoming out my tires on manhole covers, not a good sign... i quick look down and the more and more squirmy ride confirmed i'd got a puncture in my rear tire and i didn't have a 15mm wrench in my pack so i could fix it -- earlier, while i was getting ready to head out i remembered reading gwadz's story of being stuck with a broken chain but without a 15mm on his singlespeed i made a point of telling myself to pick up a 15 on my way out... i remembered to pick up the other tools (and a spare tube), but not the wrench. tried to ride it home but i was completely flat by the time i hit mt. pleasant and ended up walking the last couple of blocks.

back to training

yeah, i haven't posted for a while, but frankly there hasn't been much going on... work, trainer, sleep, repeat has been the order of business for the last week... a couple of easy rides last weekend to ease myself back onto the bike after being, then a rest week this week, so i've been taking it easy.

took my dad up to greenbrier for a ride last sunday... he started riding a bit last summer, but hasn't ridden since the weather got cold and hadn't ventured beyond schaeffer... he's always been a runner, so he's in pretty good shape, but a bit timid on a bike. in the end he surprised me with how well he handled the rocks, and stuck to it even after a few falls.

this weekend i hit greenbrier again, this time with peter, jason, wayne, and a host of others for a MORE ride.... it was a casual ride which lets everyone settles into their own pace with a few stops to let everyone regroup... i wasn't looking to ride hard, but i got in a good ride and felt strong, up near the front on most climbs, and i got to catch up with a couple people that i haven't seen for a while...

rest time is over, time to get back to training next week... still waiting to get my training plan

get there

back among the living

i'm back at work after 3 days at home with the flu... came on quickly on monday night and then really knocked me out for a couple days... i'm still not feeling a hundred percent, but i'll be back on the bike tommorow... just a road ride though, don't think i should tackle the elizabeth furnace ride yet, as much as i'd like to... maybe up to greenbrier or gambrill on sunday?

sacco's bowl-haven

went up to boston this weekend to see rob and help celebrate his 30th... flew up friday afternoon on a cheap airtran flight to logan where rob met me... we took the T back to his place in arlington and hit up a local sushi place for nigiri and udon, then spent a half hour trying to find a liquor store that rob knew had a lot of good belgian beers.

we'd all rented hotel rooms downtown so that we wouldn't have to deal with getting out to arlington after the T stopped running so saturday morning we met ryan, steve, and alisa, who flew in that morning, and got checked in. after a quick slice of pizza i spent an hour at the gym in the hotel, then we met up with rob's girlfriend and a bunch of their work and college friends for stop 1 on the itinerary, dinner at penang, a cool indonesian restaurant and then jumped on the T to head out to somerville for a couple of hours of candlepin bowling at sacco's bowl-haven... sacco's hasn't been renovated for years, no fancy automatic pinsetter, scoring with a pad and pencil, the works... after two hours of unremarkable bowling we all walked over to the burren for beer and whiskey...

as the party crowd thinned down, we got back on the T before it stopped running to head back downtown... stopped by the hotel but the bar was closed there so we walked over to a place we'd seen while we were walking around earlier, Foley's... the place was half empty when we got there, plenty of tables and a good selection of beers.... i guess it was one of the last places open, since it was pretty packed by the time we left...

up early sunday morning for a quick workout before we had to check out from the hotel... easy flight back, no line at security...

off...

up early this morning (well, early-ish) to hit the trainer for an hour since i'm leaving work early today to head up to boston for the weekend... it's rob's 30th this weekend, so i'm heading up with a couple of friends to help him celebrate... food, friends, beer, what more could you want... bowling!