Ok, for starters, I apologize for both the lack of pictures and the bitterness that follows….but here you have it.  I’m continuing with the focus on the more interesting race write-ups on the weekends and just including the rides in between without any unnecessary detail.  If you’re interested in my training data, let me know and I’ll send you the Sigma files ;-0

Many of you have already heard the first person account of yesterday’s mini-drama, but for everyone else I’ll relay the following saga.

I was really pscyhed to race yesterday.  The course was touted as an “instant classic” by the race organizers.  A 29 mile road race with 2 laps of 14 miles and change (a little longer than advertised, but a great course).  The “classic” part relates to the name of the event, the “Fawn Grove Roubaix”.  Roubaix is an often used homage to the French classic Paris-Roubaix, one of the hardest single day races in all of cycling history.  Its a hellish race spanning ancient mud-slicked cobblestone roads, what in fact make it so great (for those of you who call yourselves cyclists but are unfamiliar ;-0).  So instead of cobblestones and mud, our race had an equal portion of dirt roads, rock and dust.  Instead of the French countryside, we were treated to an equally beautiful tour through southern Pennsylvania farm country.  I don’t say that sarcastically either.  It was a really pretty area of southern Lancaster county – an area that I’ll be seeing a ton of this spring given the 4 or 5 races I have planned up there between now and June.  There was about 1200 feet of climbing per lap, and it wasn’t the false flat variety either.  We had some really nice power climbs to separate the pack right from the beginning.  I went out of my way to make special gear adaptations for this “instant classic” as well.  We were told to bring heavy tubes, tires and wheels.  So not wanting to risk my EA90s and pristine DA drivetrain on the Seven, I opted to mount up some bomber Conti GatorSkin Ultra 25s with some thicker tubes to play it safe and hopefully avoid any flats.  I figured my heavy Bontrager training wheels would suck on the climbs, but would stand up to the abuse of the dirt roads just fine.  So the stage was set for an awesome day of racing….Right?

Well, here’s how the race went down.

It was a neutral start, where we were led out by a motorcycle and car onto a paved road before they honked the horn signaling a pretty uneventful start.  The first couple minutes were on chip and seal farm road.  I quickly found myself near the back of a 60+ rider Cat 4/5 peleton given my late arrival to the starting area and some initial inattentiveness.  I hadn’t pre-ridden the course, but I knew based on some start-line conversation that the first gravel/dirt road section was not even 2 miles in.  I also knew that I wanted to be toward the front for that asphalt to gravel transition.  I managed to make my way into the middle of the pack just before the transition.  Sure enough, a rider just a few spaces up from me when down hard right as we made the turn on the dirt road.  I just barely managed to slip around the traffic jam and jump in with about 20 guys that started hammering down the next section.  A mile or two farther up the road, we hit a surprisingly long and steep climb.  Everybody was dropping gears and crawling up the hill right from the beginning.  I wasn’t gonna have any of it.  I powered up the dusty gravel (think fireroad) climb in 39×21 and went from 20 something position to 3rd.  I found myself cresting the climb onto a smoothly paved road with a handful of other riders who quickly formed a break.  I’m almost certain there were just 4 of us, but it’s a little fuzzy at this point.  So while other folks are struggling up the climb, we seized the opportunity and proceeded to hammer down the high speed rollers.  We were buzzing along in the low 30s when the road steepened into a fairly high speed descent.  I looked down and saw upper 40s as we quickly approached a T intersection at the bottom of the hill.  I was in 2nd position at this point and the rider in front of me was blowing into the turn too fast, but just barely managed to make a left turn onto another section of gravel.  I was also coming into the turn way too hot, and didn’t quite make the turn…just barely managing to stay on the bike (so much for a caution sign for those of us that hadn’t pre-ridden).  I tried to downshift and veer left when I realized my chain had popped off….about the same time at which I heard skidding behind me….immediately followed by the sounds of bike and rider making contact with the road.  Ouch.  I was already off to the left out of the way when my adrenaline spiked upon seeing the dude go down, followed by a couple other riders pass by both me (unclipped at this point) struggling with my chain…and the rider down on the road.  In retrospect, I feel a little douche baggy for not having rushed to the aide of the dude having gone down behind me….but my immediate thoughts were “that’s what the race organizers/support car/ambulance are for,” and “what the hell am I gonna do anyway”?  So I got my bike shifting again…and followed the other couple of guys who had just passed me (presumably the other couple that were with us in the breakaway that hadn’t crashed.

So right away we were slogging back up a long rolling ascent.  I looked back several times and thought to myself “man, I wonder if the crash scene at the intersection is gonna hold up the rest of the field as they come down that descent” and “wow, I can’t see anybody coming up the hill….we’re putting on a nice gap”.

About a mile or so up at the top of the climb we hit a 3 way intersection as I catch the lead couple of guys.  The lead rider pulls over to the side, stops, and is looking around when another dude says the obvious thing we’re all realizing after having just labored up a long ass climb with nobody behind us “I think we’re off the course”.

Talk about going from podium to pissed off in about 3 seconds.  A glimmer of hope remained.  Could the wreck and possibility of an ambulance at the T intersection have created enough of a delay for us to double-back and then catch the peleton?  We cooked back down the hill in hopes of seeing some riders at the base of the descent.  There was nothing.  The fallen rider presumably was able to hop back on and ride off without much assistance because in the few minutes it took us to climb up the hill, realize we were off the course, and then double back….there wasn’t a hint of a problem.  My first thought was to blame it on adrenaline fueled groupthink.  We all pretty much acted as lemmings following one another off the cliff.  How the hell did we blow this, I wondered.  2 of the other 4 guys faded out of the picture.  At this point, I’m not sure if they just doubled back toward the start line (afterall, we were only about 5-6 miles into a 14 mile lap) or what, but as I continued onto the remainder of the course in hopes of maybe, just maybe catching the peleton, I found myself with just one other guy.  We vented to one another about the snafu, and continually asked ourselves where the referees or signs were….especially at a T intersection at the base of such a dangerous descent.  As we cruised through the remainder of the lap, “Andrew” and I managed to reel-in a random rider or two, mostly likely other folks that had fallen off the back for any number of reasons.  One thing is for sure.  The course, had I been in a better frame of mind (or in contention for a podium spot), would have been a lot of fun.  The dirt road sections were really gnarly and loose, with much of the stone approaching golf ball size.  From what little time I was able to judge my performance against the main field….I felt tremendously confident where others were getting pretty sketchy with the bike handling.

We finished the first lap and realized after speaking with the USA cycling representative at the start area, that if we wanted our race to count toward an Cat 4 upgrade, then we’d have to finish.  Talk about sh*tty.  There’s nothing worse than riding off the back.  Whereas the pros have a team car to come scoop them up and take them back to get a massage, we were left to complete another lap by ourselves.  We looked at it as just another training ride, but it was hard to overlook the snafu and the opportunity lost.  After circling back around to the scene of the mishap on lap 1, we looked for the signage (or lack thereof).  Sure enough, there was a small DARK GREEN sign with BLACK print, no larger than 10”x15” on the side of the road on a stake planted in some tall grass about 100 meter before the intersection saying “Go Right” or something to that effect.  So unless you were scanning the side of the road for a camouflaged earth tone sign well before the turn (while you’re descending at 45mph), you were very likely to miss it.

Of course if I had pre-ridden the course, this would have been a non-issue.  Yet in fairness to myself, I think that any course you’re paying money to compete on, should be 100% mindless.  You should NEVER ever have to make a decision as to which way to turn.  This isn’t adventure-racing after all.  I’m obviously quite bitter about all this, and even more so the day after, now that I’ve checked the race results only to see that I handily beat the 2nd place guy by 5 spots in the previous week’s race.  Despite our breakaway detour and subsequent 1.5 mile handicap, Andrew and I managed to finish 27/28 out of 60+ starters in the 4/5 race.  So I can’t be too upset.

Another reality check came later in the day when I found out my friend Norman (guy in Brooklyn with the 953 IF) had broken his collar bone on a ride earlier that afternoon.  So in contrast, my day was pretty darn good considering I walked away with my body intact.  Get well soon Norman.

I’m hoping to fare a bit better this Saturday at the Union Grove road race, again up in Lancaster, PA.  I’m not gonna “Babe Ruth it” and point to the podium, but I’ll be surprised to find myself out of the top 5.  There should again be a large 60-70 rider field for this one.

Stay tuned.

Warning the following post is a bit out of date since it was written early last week and remained in draft mode.  I didn’t want it to go to waste and thought this photos were pretty solid, so here you have it.

First, a bit of an off-topic sentiment: I’m starting to feel pretty bad for the Walt Works sitting in the corner of our apartment, utterly neglected since birth. The road racing bug has bitten me pretty hard lately and I’m left wondering how many mountain rides I’ll be able to sneak in considering nearly every weekend between now and July 25 (wedding day) is booked with a road event. But anyway….

As usual, I’ll gloss over the day to day training rides and just recap by saying that I really slacked off last week and only logged 2 rides between Sunday’s Race 1 and last Saturday’s Race 2. I probably had more ounces of wine that week than I rode miles…..(yeah, the Paulson training plan in effect). That’s all coming to an end though. The racing thing is taking hold.

Last Saturday (Race #2) up in Lancaster was SWEET. No I didn’t break away for a dominant victory, but I did walk away feeling like I had some of the best form in the Cat 4-5 peleton that day. Whereas the week prior, I found myself overly aggressive and not thinking through my strategy thoroughly enough, I did almost nothing BUT think about my strategy during the second race. Again being one of the 3-5 guys in the hills without any problem at all. The unfortunate thing about this race and I suspect many of the races that I’ll do, is that the hills are quite short and sweet, without any true “climbing”. The hunt is on for something with some vertical…

Ok, the race report.

The Millport Road Race, was actually more of a circuit, in that they had blocked off about 3 miles of Lancaster county (Floyd Landis’s family lives just a few miles from the course….a huge Amish area) and had us do 9 laps for about a 27 mile race on slightly rolling terrain. The weather gave the race a very Benelux vibe, with wet gray skies, a chilly spring breeze and uninterrupted horizons of rolling farmland. The area had seen a shitload of rain in the days before, so the roads were definitely puddle laden in places, with a mix of damp and dry pavement elsewhere. The only thing missing were the Napoleonic cobblestones (ok, maybe not the only thing missing…).

Oksana and I got up at the ass crack of dawn to roll out of Arlington at 6am so I could make my 10am start with plenty of time to warm up. The warm up turned out to be a moot point because they delayed the 10am start (after everyone was at the line) nearly 30 minutes. It was nipple popping cold standing out on a country road at 10am in damp 40 something degree weather….it was definitely a bit of a downer to be that cold at the start of a race.  Here I am trying my hardest to look tough despite the discomfort:

Once we did finally get started, there wasn’t much messing around before the peleton jacked the pace up pretty high (30ish on the flats). The first couple laps were uneventful, with only some occasional sketchiness in the corners on the part of weaker bike-handlers. Then on lap 3, a bit of carnage. A junior rider (maybe a 19 yr old?) went down hard, along with 3-5 other riders immediately in front of me on one of the wet corners. I skidded to a stop (always a little dicey on a road bike, with 23s at 130psi no less) and busted out a brief trackstand before squirting out around the mess unharmed. Oksana put on her photojournalist hat and managed to snap a pic of the poor lad as he lay face down on the side of the road, with the ambulance on its way:

The next couple laps were much the same as the first few, with a bit more jockeying for position. I tried my best to remain cool and not become too overzealous as I saw the field break out a bit, with a good 30-40 riders ahead of me. I continually yo-yoed between the top 10-15 every time we encountered a hill, and then drifting back into the comforts of the the middle as we got cooking on the flats. It was pretty much exactly as I had planned it out in my head.  Here’s a couple shots of the peleton:

Once the final lap came around, the intensity shot way up as expected. I tried to stay in the top 20 or so as best as possible but was getting a bit boxed out. The largest hill on the course about 2 miles in was my saving grace position wise, because it allowed me to shoot up toward the leaders. Lots of riders were indiscreetly setting up there attack (aggressively moving up, etc.) going into the last straight away before an S-turn, and then the 100 meter finish (checkout the course map here, and you can see the final turn). I jumped on the wheel of one of the more aggressive riders surging on the outside, and moved up along with him coming out of the final turn. As soon as my defacto leadout guy stood up to sprint, I surged out around him (pretty easily done after he had been leading me out for 200meters) on the outside and tried my best to make up some ground on the lead 3-4 riders over to the inside. They had too big of a jump though, and I came across the line with 6-7 other guys about a bike length behind the first 4 and about 30-40 meters ahead of the main field. After the race organizers reviewed the video, I was pleased to find out that I snagged 9^th overall. I kept thinking to myself that if I had only had another 100meters….but then again, I’m sure the x number of guys behind me were thinking the same thing.  Here’s the final sprint.  You’ll notice me on the right side.  Just after this photo was taken, I busted out along the left side of the sprint.  Guy who is in the lead in this photo just barely held off the chase group.  He had a great position coming out of the final turn.

It was a much better race than last week because the size of the field was so much larger, and my tactics were much better thought out, with only the execution needing some work. With the mooched leadout, I was able to sprint up to 38mph on the final stretch, compared to barely over 30mph the week before, both instances being flat with somewhat similar wind conditions.

All this excitement prompted me to immediately investigate my team options. I decided that I no longer wanted to show up as a scrappy “unattached” rider. I pinged NCVC (National Capitol Velo Club) and joined up after exchanging some emails with their membership guy. I attended the first team meeting of the season tonight, picked up my kit and got the full scoop on race reimbursement (they’ll pay race entries) and expected behavior. I’m planning on slowly jacking up my volume and doing a bit more PT to keep my knees in order. If all goes as planned, I should be able to jump up to Cat 4 by July or so. I’m guessing I’ll also jump in a few mtb races this summer as well, just to mix it up a bit. The Wednesday at Wakefield series should be pretty solid mid-week training before I head over to Ukraine.

Race day.

My foray into the road racing scene began on Sunday morning.  After years of training on the road in one capacity or another (usually preparing for mountain bike race-season), I finally got myself to the start line for a legit road race.

My first impression?  I had more fun in my first small town crit than I’ve had in 90% of the mountain races I’ve done (big and small) over the past few years.  That being said, its really really hard to compare the two styles since they are just so different.  Its also pretty hard to top 12/24hr mtn races where you have a team format….any race where you can hang out and drink beer during the race, well that’s just unbeatable.

I had gone out on a limb registering for a race located 3.5 hours from Arlington with a 9am start, so Oksana and I decided to just make a weekend of it so I could avoid the ridiculously early drive on Sunday morning.  Instead we drove down to Virginia beach on Saturday morning, did the “walk on the beach” thing despite the abnormally low temperatures, and basically just hung out all day.  We had some pretty solid seafood at a little grill on the beach Saturday night and then got to bed early in a hotel just 3 miles from the course in Suffolk, VA.  I couldn’t help but feel slightly ridiculous for staying in a hotel for a Cat 5 crit…..but whatever.

I’d like to say that I wasn’t really that nervous, but I woke up before the alarm went off at 6:30 and had some serious butterflies going on.  I suppose if I had a more casual approach to the race and didn’t expect to be at least a little bit competitive, I would have been able to relax.  But for whatever reason, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself and didn’t enjoy my continental breakfast at all.

There were about 30 racers lining up at 9am, and it felt like a good number for how small the course was (about 1/2 mile).  The race was only 45 minutes long, so it felt like the time was flying by.  I had read so many posts on various forums about proper strategy and how to properly conserve energy and so forth, but despite all the info floating around in my head….I somehow found a way to justify chasing down several breakaways even though they were very early on and posted virtually no threat (no primes) on the small flat course.  I was flying around the course with my face in the wind at 28mph and my heart rate absolutely jacked.   Yeah, not so smart.  After the second time sprinting out from the pack and making a spectacle of myself, I decided to play it cool and just hang back.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the pack was navigating the corners.   Even though the course was small, and there wasn’t much room to setup for the corners, the yo-yo effect was pretty minimal, even when I found myself toward the back.  Most times I looked down at my computer, I was seeing mid 20s - even in the corners - so the pace was decent.

Here are a couple race shots:

The above is a stretch just after the finish where it would thin out a bit before the sharpest turn.

Notice the yellow dudes, they were on one of the teams that had 3-4 guys in the race, among several teams.  Green guy is one of the 5-6 “fat frogs” racers (I gotta say I have to question the seat pack thing in a race, let alone a crit….wtf????)

Here’s another pic of me again, trying to look cool.

So, I watched the laps tick down, and when we were at 4, then 3, then 2, I started to move up behind one of the stronger guys paired up with one of his teammates.

We had already gone around damn near 40 times, so I had the turns really dialed by the time the last few laps started ticking down.  I knew that with the minimal distance between the finish line and the last corner, it was gonna be key to be one of the first through that last turn.

That thinking was my undoing.

Before that last corner, I sprinted around the “Fat Frogs” riders (2 teammates I was drafting on the last lap) and went into the final turn in the lead.  I had this really sweet surge of confidence that came about 11 seconds too soon.  I actually thought to myself “holy shit, I have this thing locked up,” “no way they can carry the same kind of speed I just did through that corner”.

I was wrong.

Here I am about 20 meters from the finish line, you can see the fat frogs guy passing me on my left (I had some pretty shoddy sprint form as well)

I ended up taking 4th.  The fact that 3 guys on local teams caught me at the line was no coincidence.  I both, A) laid off the gas in my moment of self glory and B) had no chance of out sprinting the #2 fat frog that probably had 1/2 the distance in the wind that I did.

Anyway, I learned some pretty huge lessons, and have never been more excited for the next race (this Saturday in Lancaster, PA).  Race report #2 to follow soon thereafter.

So a shit-load of stuff to catch up on.  It turns out that living life can get in the way of blogging.  I’ve pretty much let this baby go for a couple weeks now, so I’ll start by doing a 9 ride post to bring my day to day rides up to date, and then a follow-up post to re-cap Sunday’s race.

The last two weeks were a hodge-podge of rides of varying intensity (mostly pretty chill).  The last posted ride finished on a pretty bummer vibe (something I tried not to dwell on at the time, since its becoming a bit of a dead horse).  The same old story - I was feeling my burned out with my IT band bothering me just as it had in early January, and it definitely got me going on a paranoid streak again.  I knew I had a road race scheduled for the end of March (coming up next weekend), so I decided to just focus on logging some laid back road miles (with a laid-back mtn ride and some light interval work mixed in), and skip the longish +3hr mountain rides.

Here’s a breakdown of the last few rides as succintly as I can recall them:
Rides 78-82 were almost all road rides at night after work, riding the same worn out loop into DC, around Hains Point and up through Georgetown.
Ride 83 “the Dogfish ride”.  This was a great Friday afternoon group trail ride out in Great Falls, that served as a warmup for a long night filled with many pints of 60 minute.  Here’s a pic that gives one a sense of how the night panned out:

feel free to submit a caption…

Rides 84-86 were prepatory rides for my race this past Sunday, blah blah blah….

onto the next post.

Since I didn’t get enough punishment on Saturday, I was bound determined to get in another ride on the Walt Sunday afternoon come hell or high water.  The weather threw a kink into my plans for a locally sourced ride #77, providing lots of precipitation overnight and even some mild snow here in Arlington (a rarity) which obviously thrashed the sensitive over trafficked nearby parks.  So the backup plan for inclement weather was some kind of loop out in GWNF where relatively few folks venture out to ride, and where you can almost always bet that the trail will do more damage to you than you will ever do to it (at least on the ridges anyway).

Sunday turned out to be a perfect example of why you should often ignore the voice of reason that chimes in with sentiments like: “its gonna be cold and wet out there,” “you’re gonna be all by yourself,” “it’d be a lot easier to just watch some episodes of the Wire on demand this afternoon,” etc.  I pretty much heard all those things, and the voice got even louder when I found out that nobody was on board with my plan and I’d be going solo or not at all.

Man was it worth it though.  I got a really late start and had to abort my plan B to ride out at Wolf Gap and instead settle for plan C at the more familiar Elizabeth Furnace area.  Being bored with the normal EF loop, I decided to go with the “figure eight of hate” that Ian and I had taken a liking to last year.   The ride was top-notch and even more entertaining than normal.  I had a great time and thanked myself for not listening to the siren call of the couch.

I snapped a few trail pictures below, so you can see how much more adventurous the conditions were than the normal summer route presents.  The ridge was absolutely demanding as hell.  Some parts were nice and fluffy, where I found myself riding the powdery snow and leaves, but other parts were an icy rocky pain in the ass.  At times I felt like a rockstar clearing stuff I had no business clearing, but other times I felt incredibly humbled by the most modest of snow cover - forced to dismount on cake technical sections.  The extra vertical involved in climbing up to Woodstock tower didn’t help my energy levels while making my way back on the icy ridge either.

As you can see below, some of the trail was prime.  Winter or not, the trails felt great.  A few soft spots on the fireroads, but all in all, a great loop considering the precipitation the days prior.

I substituted the $300 Sidi insoles (on display the day before) for a pair of $2 chemical packs that I remembered were in my glove-box, placed there years ago as a standard component to my upstate NY winter riding kit.  They were a sweet hedge against the pain of a booty-less ride.

So after 3 hours of slogging around GWNF, I was thoroughly beat up, and incredibly satisfied with my new favorite bike.  Ok, thats the last gratuitous Walt Works praise I’ll work in for awhile.

Coming up this week: more snow rides!

Ok, a slightly longer post to bring things up to date.

Instead of recapping a largely non-bike-related vacation on here, I’ll simply offer up a couple bike relevant things I noticed over in Spain.  First of all, Madrid appeared to be an extremely non-bike-friendly European city (at least on the surface anyway).  I’ve often assumed that all European cities were by default more bike-friendly than comparable U.S. cities, but Madrid was surprisingly pedestrian/auto-centric.  It seemed like there were fast moving roads for cars, and then lots and lots of crowded pedestrian zones, but nothing in-between that lead me to believe that Madrid would be a good city to get around via bike.  This is also evident in the extremely small number of cyclists observed.  I’m not really exaggerating when I say that I probably could have counted the number of cyclists I saw on just a couple hands.  Keep in mind, this is coming from somebody who scrutinizes every rider he glances at - so I’m not exaggerating when I saw that there were hardly any cyclists to be seen.  Granted, it was February, but it was nonetheless 50-60 degrees almost every day we were there…

Barcelona on the other hand, seemed to be a bit more bike-oriented.  They had the same bike-rental setup that DC instituted last year (only they actually use theirs).

Here’s a shot of one of their racks.  They look almost exactly like those here in DC.

As most folks know, the downside to any vacation is the return to normalcy (i.e. not being able to guzzle wine on a daily basis).  That being said, this past week was a good transition from vacation time back to the real world - made possible with the help of multiple booze fueled group rides.  Hooray!

Take for example the first ride back (Ride #74), which was my second outing on the Walt and my 3rd mtb ride in as many months.  Ironically it was a night ride on the very same trails that my last Surly ride took place on - out in Great Falls near the Maguire house (also the site of multiple post-ride Dogfish Head pints).   I bet we barely rode an hour before downing three times as many alcohol calories than we burned on the ride - nice.

Then there was ride 76 (ride 75 was a boring road ride where I struggled with the wind on Friday night) which involved a huge group of us meeting out at Gambril on Saturday morning.  The ride would be my first real test of the new Walt Works build.  The first couple rides were on really easy terrain with few technical challenges, but Saturday was a wake up call.  The bike was simply awesome.  I didn’t feel anywhere close to as beat up as I did with the Surly.  The ride quality was far tighter, and simply more compliant than the Karate Monkey could ever dream of being.  I wish I could say that I was tearing it up out there on the new rig hammering up the hills, but in reality my lungs were burning pretty bad 90% of the way.  Despite the off-setting pleasure of riding a new bike, my body took about 50 minutes to warm up and feel reasonably fit.  Being that we only rode for a little more than an hour, it was far too late to really enjoy it 100%.  It was however, a great jolt back into the game.  I finished the ride knowing that I’d be back out there on a daily basis riding hard again….its just too fun not to.  It was exactly what I needed to stoke the fire.

All that fire stoking necessitated some refreshment….and lacking a home bar serving up fresh DFH, our comrade Johnny B was kind enough to have some bottles of 90 minute on hand for some parking lot refueling.  Here’s a shot of CJ and Jimmy (Jimmy is the one with the most pimped-out 29er singlespeed you’ll ever see (custom Ti Blacksheep w/ I9 wheels, vintage Cook cranks, etc.)….mounted on the back of his TT no less).  You obviously can’t tell in the pic, but Jimmy was also pimped out with the Sidi Toaster insoles for our ride.  Hot Damn!

So a lot of random stuff going on since my return from Spain earlier this week (mostly work obligations) …..but I’m a little bit drunk and a little too lazy to write about anything bike-related right this moment….

soooooooo

a couple observations from the week:

• a bloody mary is a perfectly acceptable recovery drink
• so is anything from Dogfish Head brewery….mmmm (twice now in one week, has DFH been my recovery drink)
• there is NO substitute for full-fat mayo when making a tuna fish sandwich
• speaking of full-fat mayo…home made fries on a Saturday afternoon go pretty damn well with mayo…..mmmmmm

Now you can guess how my week has unfolded.

Ok, so I promise to post up some pictures and some “real” content just as soon as I am done binging on fries.  I have a couple of mtb rides and a road ride to blab about….

stay tuned.

After a 6er of Miller High Life and a long Friday evening of tweaking and tuning….I got the Walt Works ready for action.  Given that Oksana and I had postponed the start of our vacation (deciding to skip the day we had planned up in NYC today), I had a ton of motivation to get the new bike built up so I could sneak out for the inaugural ride this afternoon instead.

I’ll save everyone the worn-out bike review hyperbole and simply summarize today’s first ride as awesome.  I know I’ll own this bike a long time (can’t say that for too many of my bikes).

Walt really nailed the design based on my less than perfect description of my “needs and wants” in terms of handling and geometry….and the result is a bike that is way more agile….and quite simply faster than the Surly.

All this was pretty overwhelming given I had not been on a mountain bike in (gasp) 3 months! prior to today.  I realized today that my last ride on the Surly was waaaay back in mid November (before Thanksgiving) out at Dan Maguire’s place.

It was well worth the wait though.

Here’s a pic of the finished build taken out on the trail (its a mix of both practical and higher-end stuff)

The green cables are re-cycled from the Surly, so yeah…..they’re fugly and yeah, I’ll be changing them soon.  Otherwise, I’m set on most everything else.

I’d go into a description of all the parts, but it’s time to go get some packing done.

Be back in a little more than a week…

http://fedex.com/Tracking?ascend_header=1&clienttype=dotcom&track=y&cntry_code=us&language=english&tracknumbers=872277610000440%0D%0A&action=1&language=null&cntry_code=null

pics tonight!

Ok, time for a catch-up post

Rewind to last Saturday for a bit of irony

So I was mildly bummed after busting balls to get my new xc skis all mounted up and ready to go (see previous post)….only to have the weather spike up to the 50s and 60s (even in the higher elevations in WV) and ruin my chances. I was on the highway heading west early Saturday morning when CJ called me to elaborate on the shitty ski conditions in Davis, WV (he had gone out the day before). Long story short, I had to bail on my nordic weekend, and face the fact that skiing while living south of the Mason-Dixon is a crap-shoot at best. Ho Hum.

On a positive note, sometimes laziness pays off…

Imagine my potential disappointment with all my ski gear packed up in the car, coffee in hand, heading west to get in some quality time in the woods….only to hear word that the snow is vanishing by the hour. Well right away I was thinking of contingencies…..and wouldn’t ya know….I still had all my (semi-dirty) hiking gear in the car from the previous Saturday’s hike with Oksana. So, it took me all of about 30 seconds to link the options together and realize that I was gonna make some lemonade and spend the day getting in a solid hike, scouting some singletrack for summer mtb adventures. The destination was one of my favorite areas of the GWNF…a place referred to as the “Great North Mountain” aka “Wolf Gap recreation area”. Whatever its called, it is indeed “Great”. It’s the prime little slice of wilderness that doesn’t see hardly anyone from the city, despite being only 2 hours away from central DC. It’s got wonderful topography, a great mix of trail surfaces, a very rugged vibe (very little in the way of bailouts if you get in deep) and a very cool lack of “established” rides. There are so many options to link together different pieces, its hard to actually name any specific loop.  So that means you gotta have some map reading skill, or familiarity with the area - something that probably keeps the casual riders away.  In all, I’ve ridden there probably 6-8 times before, but usually in a situation where I’m re-tracing lots of the same sections of trail, either lacking the time to explore or being with a group of people less inclined to spend the day doing potential hike-a-bike and bushwhacking along hiking trails that are sometimes un-rideable (for them anyway….haha ;-0). So my plan was to pick out a loop on which I’d never set foot before – and then do some trail recon.

Here’s a sample of what I found:

My oh my was I pleasantly surprised. It was the second hike within a week that has yielded miles and miles of additional ride-able terrain. I ultimately logged close to 10 miles of hiking on Saturday (including a few on a dirt road I had to hike out on). I’m now compiling some pretty detailed notes about this Great North Mountain area (don’t recall the exact map#) and my hope is to catalog the entire map with thorough annotations as to where the most premium sections of singletrack lie…..and believe me, there is some great stuff: some technical stuff, some flowy stuff, some aerobic climbing stuff - basically a little of everything (well, maybe not any teeter totters). I was licking my chops the entire hike, fantasizing about my first Walt ride out there. I intend to return and actually do an extended version of what I did on Saturday, as the inaugural Walt ride…sometime the last week of February after we return from Spain.

Now for the twisted irony portion of the story. So all this talk about diversification and how I need to cross-train, and “mix it up”. Well it turns out that 10 miles of rocky trails even with a lightweight pack….is not the friendliest form of exercise I could have chosen (for my knees anyway) to “mix it up”. By the end of the hike, my right knee (not the IT band knee either….which is also weird) starting aching like a sunnofabitch. Yeah, so much for diversifying my training. I know, I know…10 miles was too much. In fairness to myself, I hit a point where I had to either double back down a huge slope I had just climbed up (boring) or log the extra miles going the long way around. So looking back, the pain was the price of admission for that roundabout route.

By the time I got home that evening, my body wasn’t in terrible shape, but I was hobbling a bit and favoring that right knee.  I went out for drinks that night, which involved a short walk to the metro, and could definitely tell something wasn’t quite right, but on the way home….man oh man, I just got this wave of intense throbbing pain in that same knee….every time my knee extended it was just pure pain. I was totally pissed….I mean, this wasn’t achy chronically inflamed IT band pain…it was searing acute pain. I went to bed just so demoralized, cursing myself as a pre-maturly aging piece of shit and kicking myself for having bitten off more than just the casual stroll in the woods I probably should have opted for….I honest to god went to bed fantasizing about trading all my bike shit for a motorcycle and saying “fuck this pedaling thing”. Its hard to understate how discouraging it is to want so badly to train and get fast, only to be sidelined by all these aggravating flare-ups.

Anyway, I woke up on Sunday to a milder ache in that same knee. Being as stubborn as I am, I decided that the 65 degree weather could absolutely not be wasted without at least a brief “recovery” type spin on the bike. It was just too damn nice out. I hopped on the Seven and off I went. The irony? No pain at all. None in the IT band leg, none in the hiking knee (me knocking on wood right now)….it was like it felt better to be spinning on the bike than to be walking around. I guess there are more ironic things in the world…but still, I felt like a million bucks, after what has been weeks with minimal riding. I rode for about 90 minutes and actually started to feel the fire coming back. The motivational fire that is. I got home and iced both my knees and then again at night. I figure on diligently stretching and icing down as a preventative measure the rest of the season. If I get “injured” again, then so be it. If I’m doing all that I can to hedge the odds…then what more can I do….

I’ve since ridden every night this week, VERY cautiously with high rpms and an easy pace, but I’m feeling the groove….and I’m liking the day to day training thing again.

“I’m back baby, I’m back!”

-George Costanza

Walt Works Update:

I’ve been pretty low-key with the Walt updates so far, but I expect to be extremely excited tomorrow evening when I get home to the most highly anticipated Fedex delivery in LONG time.

Pics to follow….