What am I to do ..

What am I to do on a Sunday evening when I am jones-in for a long ride but don't have the time to get one in? Two things, eat to the point where Jenn starts calling me Phatty Phatty McMatty and write about riding of course. I can always tell when the miles are starting to rack up because I eat anything and everything I can get my hands on. Especially cookies, which is how I got the above nickname. Although, I do not think she says it with the "PH".

So Friday, I was able to sneak away for a couple of hours on the road and was able to squeeze in a quick 48 miles. I was in the mood to do some climbing so I planned to leave the house and do one of my favorite rides of all time, Cherokee to Old Gun. Once I got to Old Gun I decided to go up the steep side prior to turning around and going up the longer but not as steep side. I had the GPS on me which was cool since I now know how steep the climb really is. The steepest I saw was 20% near the top. Can you guess where on this profile the Old Gun climbs are?

And since this is officially the 101st post of nonsense, I think I am going to go celebrate by eating another handful of cookies. Shhh!!!! Too bad it is late and Jenn is sleeping or I would have one of these.

The other night Jenn and I got a chance to watch 24 solo. It is a documentary which chronicles what Chris Eatough and others goes through in order to not only complete a 24 hour solo mountain bike race but to do it at the pro level in the world championships.



The movie was well made and it actually made me want to get back out on the mountain bike. Just kidding, I don't really have the desire to ride the BUSS but I do want to get out and get some more miles in on the cross bike. That will come tomorrow as I have spent the majority of this morning finishing up the remodeling of our master bathroom.

Isn't she a beauty?! She is a far distance from being complete but I did finish taking down the last bit of the 1980's Marriott like wallpaper. Now we just have to touch up the walls with some spackling and it will be ready to paint. Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE to paint? I know Jenn is excited about it though, not the painting but the finishing.

Later today I am going to get in about 30-35 on the La Raazzaaa before meeting Jenn and the TnT crew out at WC for another 30. Tomorrow should bring a long day in the saddle as I plan to leave the house shortly after Jenn does for work and head over to PSP for some dirty looks as I get in some cross dress action.

Got in a ride yesterday evening with Jenn and a couple of her co-workers. On my way over there I was feeling really good. Legs felt like they were just floating on the pedals and tons of power were coming out of them. About 5 miles in I am came across a railroad crossing where I ended up sitting for about 15 minutes because the engineer can't read. A flo killa fo show!

Speaking of trains, I dropped a chain checker on the Salsa the other day and in case you don't know how to use one, if you use it and it slips into the chain and lays flush like this, it is not a good sign.


So I installed a new train this morning and am ready for the TnT ride this evening. I am also going to try and sneak in a cross ride over at PSP this afternoon as well. Especially since I have just acquired a new limited edition black spoked mavic wheel from back in the day. Eat your hearts out red spoke lovers!

What to do ...

What to do? Oh what to do when work gets in the way of riding? You think about riding thats what. I have once again started to work on some of the logistics for a couple of the UMCA records in which I want to attempt to break this summer. I have gotten as far as deciding which ones I wish to attempt. I certainly wish to break two of them and haven't made up my mind as to which direction I want to go or if I want to go for both directions at the same time in an out and back fashion.

The VA border to border record is still on the radar and I have also put the C&O canal record on the map as well. I have ridden the canal many a times and will be excited to make claim to an attempt there. The Blue Ridge Parkway record also looks like a fun local one to try. That was until I read this story. Now I am thinking twice about doing it out of respect for the record holder. I know records were meant to be broken but I also believe some things don't need to be improved upon. Maybe I'll do it in the opposite direction, who knows what the summer will bring. Until then I have a spoke to repair.

It's a numbers game ..

Yesterday, I was planning on getting myself up out of bed early enough to ride into work. Last night I decided it would be better if I drove into work as my legs are a bit tired from two consecutive days of hard riding. The good news is though the power in my legs seems to be at an all time high. On flat-ish roads I used to be able to get the bike up over 30 mph only for a few seconds before I would burn up like a gasoline doused leaf pile but yesterday I was able to hold it at about 33 for about 8/10 of a mile. Have to admit it has me a bit excited about riding again but not as much as 27.7 miles of views like this one ....

Do you remember back in school going through the human development class and the instructor telling you it was dangerous to play the game "just the tip"? If your instructor was the same way as mine she gave two reasons: 1) can still get pregnant and 2) you run the risk of breaking it off. Now in cycling chances of you getting pregnant are a lot slimmer although not entirely impossible but breaking the tip off can be done very easily. Especially when your cleats are as worn out as these. The tip ended up breaking on my last Saturday after the ride.

Yesterday was a great day of riding. The r*** finally decided to detour around Richmond so I started by putting new cleats on the shoes.

I then met up with Hugh and Bill for the Unemployed Cyclists ride which RABA leads out of the Hanover Courthouse every Thursday. Hugh told em they would be doing a different variation of the route called Burke's Bridge. It had a nice mix of rolling to flat terrain with a two handfuls of raisins err I mean climbs mixed in. Definitely a fun ride which shall be duplicated again.

I met Jenn and the TnT crew out at Westcreek later in the evening to do another 30 miles. With the couple of hours in between the two rides my legs were feeling a bit heavy at the start. A few miles in they started to free themselves and I started to feel good again. This was very encouraging as I start to ramp up the miles in hopes of one day getting my lazy arse back into shape.

While riding I told Jenn that some of the kids on the other ride made the comment that my shoes look like they were older than I was and that I wanted to buy a new pair so I could fit in with all the cool kids at school. This is when I got spooked a bit because her motherly instincts kicked in and said "those are $300 shoes you are not getting new ones. You can make due with the ones you have." And I am going to stop there before I type something I will get in trouble for.

Today I plan on meeting Hugh once again this time out at the Battlefield and then possibly riding into work on Saturday morning. That is if my legs can still hold me up tomorrow morning.

Saturday morning I left the house at 6:45 am to get in some extra miles. I rode over to the Osborne Boat Landing where I met the TnT crew. The legs were feeling a lot better than when I had rode home from work Friday afternoon. Heading into the city I was able to hold just under a 21 mph avg. Then I was reminded about why riding in the city sucks big time. Stop lights and pot holes, stop lights and pot holes, blah blah blah. Made it out to the boat landing and then we progressed out as a team for another 37 miles or so. Towards the end the bike started to make a chain slap noise when I was in the 11 tooth or what I like to call Lil W VA cause thats the same number of teeth W Virginian's have.

Thinking the slap was being caused by a dirty drivetrain I decided to clean it last night. Thats when I found the root of the problem. The lockring on my cassette had started to work itself loose. Yikes!

Isn't that the ugliest skewer you have ever seen on a set of Chris King hubs?

Finished cleaning the bike and started to pray that the rain would move out faster than my rediscovered motivation to ride long distances again does.

You can learn ..

You can learn everything you ever need to know about life if only you eat more Chinese food.  A few weeks ago, Jenn and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant on this side of town.  I cannot really remember what I had to eat but its not important.  What is important though was the message inside my fortune cookie.  It said something to the effect that I should be journaling (<---evidently I just made up a word or I am smarter than Google spellcheck.  I'll go with making up a word.) my life happenings. So here we are me writing more nonsense and you reading it.  

I have been wanting to try and blog more often especially since there is so much going on right now between riding, improvements to the house and preparing for a wedding which used to seem like it was so far away but now is starting to peak out at us from around the corner.   I am running short on time this morning but I will starting posting more frequently about all of the above and I might actually include some pictures as well.