powering up reddish knob...

back from stokesville and my car is covered in a great layer of dust from the dirt roads in the GWNF... went down saturday evening and set up camp just in time to get dinner, catch up with folks and have a couple of beers. sunday i hit the road for an assault on reddish knob while heather went out for a hike with the other non-riders from our group.

reddish knob took ~58 minutes to climb from tilghman road. i spent almost all of it in my 39x25, cranking out about 300 watts (finally have my power tap mounted up)... since it's the first time doing the full 3000' climb, i guess this is my baseline PR... only 20 minutes slower than jeremiah bishop, though i don't know where he counted the "start". rather than brave the gravel road down the back on my 23c tires, i turned around and doubled back to finish off a good 3 hr/45 mile ride.

later in the afternoon heather & i took a quick spin on the dirt roads in the forest and i ended the day convoying to the other side of the forest with tommy, bunky, and mark to check on some riders who were still unaccounted for from the southern traverse ride. by the time we made it there the situation was under control. everyone was accounted for and though there was an injury that required medical assistance and an extraction from the trail the professionals were on the case.

back, but busy...

4 days since being ok'd to ride and 3 days on the bike so far... feels good to be back and working my way out from under this cloud. no big rides so far, just getting the feel back, making sure my collarbone is ok with it... did some hill repeats last night... they were an easier version of what i was doing a couple of weeks months ago. by the last one, without thinking, i could feel myself upping the intensity and starting to watch the clock.

MORE/IMBA camping trip at stokesville this weekend... no mountain biking, but i'll be there with my road bike... anyone want to join me on a trip up reddish knob?

wish i could bike to work day...

wish i could have been out biking to work this morning, but as of my commute time this morning i still wasn't allowed to ride a bike. had a checkup from my orthopedist at lunch and the good news is that as of 1 o'clock this afternoon and i'm allowed to ride again... as long as i don't fall.

there's new bone growing and i've got almost no pain or discomfort, but there's still too much risk of re-inuring myself to think about mountain biking yet. it looks like i'll probably just be riding on the road for a while, but i'll take what i can get after 7 1/2 weeks of not riding at all.

it's starting to feel like the world is playing a practical joke on me... i just wish it'd hurry up and get to the end.

excuse me for a second while i let the curtain down for a bit and whine...

first the collarbone, then the bike, now this... last week i finally felt good enough to get to some hard workouts on the trainer, and then by the end of the week i've got a minor cough/congestion thing that stuck around through the weekend. i took it easy and did a couple of 45 zone 1 spins on the trainer instead of the workouts that were scheduled to give my body some time to recover. yesterday i felt better, so i did a proper workout and today i feel like i'm coming down with something...

it's nothing major, and in every way except for the biking, life is going really well right now, but this constant stream of frustrations and bad luck is starting to really get me down...

on a lighter note...

looks like the team had a pretty damn good weekend at Lodi...

• matt, mike s, and jon wheaton - 1st place sport 3-man - this was the team i'd have been on if i hadn't hurt myself. lucky for them that i did i guess, as it eliminated my annual lodi curse.
• ricky - 1st place solo singlespeed
• gwadz and chris redlack - 1st place duo/clydesdale
  
• mike k, dt, and kent - 2nd place sport 3-man
• evan, chris, and eric - 3rd place expert 3-man

i spent the weekend not riding up in philly... lots of walking around the city, a bit of theatre, a couple of street festivals, a couple of dive bars, a few franziskaner weisbiers, and a few old rasputins.

IF Singlespeed Stolen

sad news folks, my IF singlespeed was stolen from the back of my car last night. I'm away from home right now, but i got a call from my housemates with the bad news this morning. my car was parked behind my house in Mount Pleasant last night and someone smashed the rear window to get the bike. it looks like thats all they took.

please keep an eye out for this bike...

----

Frame: Independant Fabrications Steel Deluxe Mountain Bike; Disk and V brake Mounts; Dark Red Metallic Paint w/White Panels & black, white, & gold decals; white "Joe Foley" sticker on top tube;

Fork: Fox Float F80 RLT Fork (silver, standard Decals Removed, "One Gear More Beer" & "WUSS" stickers added)

headset: chris king 1 1/8" threadless; root beer

Front Wheel: WTB Laser Disc Rim (black), Shimano XT Disc Hub (black), black spokes, specialized rockster 2.0 tire

Rear Wheel: Paul Disc Singlespeed Hub (black), WTB Laser Disc Rim (black), silver spokes, White Industries ENO Singlespeed Freewheel, Specialized Rockster 2.0 tire

Brakes: Hope Mini, lever blades replaced w/red dangerboy blades

Stem: Race Face Deus XC (black)

Handlebars: Race Face Low Riser (black)

Seatpost: Syncros (black)

Seat: WTB Rocket V Stealth (black & silver)

Chain: STAM PC-99

Bottom Bracket: Shimano XT (Octalink II)

Cranks: Shimano XT, std. chainrings removed and replaced with Spot 34t singlespeed ring and a Race Face Bash GuardChain

Tensioner: Surly Singleator

Grips: ODI Lock-On (Yeti pattern) w/Hope Grip Doctor End Plugs (red)

Seatpost Collar: Hope Quick Release (black)

greenbrier photos...

greenbrier ambc photos are up on flickr... see them here

back on the bike... well, almost...

managed to ride the trainer last night for about 30 minutes before my shoulder started getting too uncomfortable to keep going. every day my shoulder feels a little better, so tonight i'll try for a mind blowing 45 minutes.

more updates...

just realized that i haven't posted since friday's checkup... the good news is there's no bone chip, so no surgery is required. i'm still using the sling part time, but it's comfortable enough now that i can take it out to type, etc... still not enough pain-free range of motion to drive and the whole area starts to ache if i'm out of the sling for too long. i'm right handed, so being without the use of my right hand sucks... i'm trying to find a balance between comfort, convenience, and pain.

i might try setting up my road bike on the trainer tonight and see if i can find a postion that'll at least let me pedal easily for a while. actually, i think that getting the bike into the trainer will be more difficult than riding it.

hung out at the schaeffer demo day for a couple of hours on saturday, but couldn't do much except try to talk to the brave souls that came out to test bikes in the rain. heather and i stopped by the dogfish head restaurant on the way home... i tried the aprihop, which turned out to be a heartier-than-usual take on apricot flavored beer (like magic hat's number 9) and heather had a verdi verdi good which turned out to be... green. at first we thought it might be leftover from st. patricks day, but it turns out it's brewed with spirulina algae (which turns it green and adds some more protein to the beer).

announcing...

...the new and improved http://www.dcmtb.com

we've relaunched the city bikes mountain bike team website as a blog where all members will be able to post. keep an eye on it, as we hope it'll become a really active site...

update

almost a week since i broke my clavicle so i thought i'd post a little update for anyone that's interested. i'm still in a sling/split to keep my arm & shoulder imobilized most of the time. when i've got it off the range of pain free motion in my shoulder is improving, but after it's off for a while it'll start to ache, so i'll probably be stuck with this thing for a while.

obviously, i won't be going to fruita next week, as i'd been planning. i guess i could go and just hang out, but i think it would be worse to be there and not riding than to just not go at all.

spent last weekend convalescing up in philly. we managed to pull off a great easter meal for her family who came into the city on sunday. i wasn't able to help as much as i'd hoped, at times i was a liabilty, trying to do more than i could handle, but managed to bake some foccacia (filled with fresh mozzarella & basil) and dinner rolls. this was the first time heather's managed to get the family let her do a holiday meal and it all went off without a hitch (in fact i think they were impressed).

i'll still probably make a showing at the city bikes demo day at schaeffer on saturday, but i probably won't be leading any rides...

a few more details

going to keep this short since i'm without the use of my right hand and that makes typing a bit slower than usual...

riding at schaeffer on wednesday i clipped a tree with my right shoulder. i stopped suddenly but didn't hit the ground. lots of pain in my shoulder so i bushwacked out to the road and rode back to the trailhead, then called and got a ride to the er. many hours later i'm diagnosed with a fractured clavicle and put in a sling to imobilize my arm & shoulder.

saw an orthopedist thursday who confirmed the diagnosis and wanted a ct scan to check on a possible bone chip. no surgery so far (if there is a chip it may need to be pinned) but i'm in this sling for at least a week, off any kind bike for several more, and mountain biking for 2-3 months.

right now i just want to be able to use my right arm...

thanks for all the comments, i'll be back soon and i'm going to try to ride trans wales this august

do the math...

joe + bike + tree = fractured clavicle

all your road are belong to us...

almost a week and no blog entry... i've been putting almost all of my spare time into riding and working on the new dcmtb website (which should be up soon). going to head to schaeffer this afternoon to get some singlespeed singletrack miles in.

friday afternoon braindump...

tom seitsema of the post has a review of Birreria Paradiso coming out this weekend... i went there a couple of weeks ago with the swill ride guys and have to say that the pizza is really good and beer selection is impressive.

speaking of the post, keep an eye out for a contribution from mike miller (mountain biker/MORE accotink liason/all around nice guy) about dremo's (article about dive bars, go to page 3 of the article online) in the sunday source. in the online version there's a shot of mike riding IN the bar, hope that makes the print edition.

tommorow's looking rainy, so sunday might be a good day to do a pre-ride of the fitness concepts AMBC course at greenbrier. not the most exciting riding, but the 99% of the place drains like a sieve. get in touch if you're interested, i'll probably head up there early sunday morning.

almost time to head home... this is a recovery day, so maybe i'll take an easy ride down to hains point.