This weekend certainly kept me busy.

On Friday, because of rain, I canned the recovery ride because of what looked to be like rain rolling in.  So I went home quickly and took the dog for our little run.  I can do without the hour recovery, but I can’t deal with a dog that has all of her energy pent up, so letting her burn off some steam is a must.

On Saturday, I got everything all geared up for a killer ride and off I went.  After about an hourish of climbing (some pushing some pedaling) I felt something very weird happen to my hard tail, single speed 29er.  I felt it go VERY squishy.  I thought, “hrm, this bike doesn’t have any rear suspension.  Something much have happened to my seat or seat post”.  When I looked down, it was much worse.  I broke the frame where the seat tube, top tube and seat stays come together.  SON OF A……  I pointed the bike back down hill and road the 10 miles back home standing on a single speed.  Not all that much fun, in case anyone wondered.

On Sunday, after a bunch of chores around the house, I grabbed the roadie and went for a spin.  The plan was up and down Bear Notch Road and up and down the Kanc.  Mission completed.  Neither hill was that tough (remember, most hills are as 215lb people don’t work well going AGAINST gravity) and they were certainly easier to climb than last year.  I feel as if my fitness is worse off compared to last year, but I must be wrong.  Either way, it was 65 miles of pure goodness.

Today, first thing first, I called up Vassago to get my Jabberwocky warrantied and they will gladly do it.  They are sending a call tag to get the bike so they can inspect it and all that good stuff.  They will get me a size 18″ one out as soon as they can.  Ohh, and they mentioned that “as soon as they can” would probably be “MONTHS” because they are out of stock of this current years model and they are switching manufactures.  What does that mean??  It means I will be riding my full suspension gear 26″ bike.  Ohh the horror.  I love the bike I will be riding, I really do, as it is my custom Vicious Cycles, but I would rather ride a single speed 29er at this point in the year.  Ohh well.

Today, I got myself a case of the sore hands.  Let me explain.  Because Michelin makes the worlds most badass tires, we sponsor a lot of support vehicles.  One of the groups we support is the Mavic Neutral Support.  Because they have 134 wheels in their fleet, they need to put 134 tires on those wheels.  That, I can say, is not a fun afternoon.  Being Mavic USA is so close to us (about a 2 hour drive), we loaded up our truck with some tires for them and decided to lend a helping hand.  In the 2ish hours we were there mounting tires, the 4 of us mounted more than 85 tires, and none of us used a tire lever.  I can honestly say that in the 2 hours, I must have easily mounted 25 tires.  This, my friends, left me with a case of the sore hands.

To make the trip more interesting, on the drive back, it was sleeting/snowing/raining/hailing.  It was a good time.  By the time we got home, there was about 5 inches of “stuff’ on the ground and it took use 3.5 hours to complete a 2 hour drive.  Plus, it is still doing whatever it is doing and there is more “stuff” on the ground.  There has been a string of warm weather in the area, but mother nature feels that there should be more winter in New England.  And I don’t like it..

That about says it all.  I have been pretty lazy for the past…ohh while, I guess would be the appropriate amount of time.  The holidays went well, I put on a bunch of pounds from my laziness and eating, then back home to continue things.  Now my mind set is different and its time to get to work.  Time to get the bike back on the trainer.  I rented some cross country skis as an alternative to the trainer and it seems like it just might fill my itch to be outside.  I need to rent a few more pairs to determine if I like classical skiing or skate skiing.  Once I figure that out, time to pull the trigger and order some up.  In the mean time, I plan on doing some trainer work and also commuting to work.

We are not joggers.  That is Pearl Izumi’s ad campaign for their running gear.  Tonight I have decided that I am not a jogger….or a runner or anything of the sort.  I have decided that at this point in time, I am dropping the half marathon training plan for now.  The main reason….simple, there is WAY too much good biking to be done.  I have a cyclocross race tomorrow and I haven’t ridden a bike in quite some time because I have been busy running.  Not that there is anything wrong with running, but for me, my major concentration is biking.  I started running for the sole purpose to train for an adventure race that is March 1st.  I have plenty of time once the bike off season come to start to train for that.  So for now, I am putting the running shoes down and picking back up the cycling shoes.  This is the best time of the year, in my opinion, for mountain biking.  It is much cooler, the sweat isn’t pouring off of me the entire time, and now I can do a 2 hour night ride and still be home by 7:30pm.  How great is that?!?!

Tomorrow is my the first Cyclocross race of the series and I am ready to go.   After some major issues building my bike last night, broken rear dérailleur, but now things are all built and ready to go.  I am ready for the race.  Hopefully my lack of training won’t be an issue.

Last night was a cross training session so I grabbed the road bike and went out.  After about 10 minutes on the bike, I was sick of riding.  No idea why.  For years, I chose the road bike over the mountain bike but I think with all the mountain bike training I did for the 24 hour race, things might have changed.  The legs felt good, the energy and stamina was there, it was just the mind that didn’t to keep pedaling it.  This weekend I am heading up to Bar Harbor for a friends wedding and I am taking the road bike to ride with people.  Hopefully, this weekend will be different.  Maybe it was the social interaction that I was missing.  Either way, I did about 16 miles in 50ish minutes.  Not a bad showing considering I really didn’t want to be on the bike..

WOW, it has been quite some time since I made a post and there are some good reasons for that.  First, lets talk about the 24 hour race.

It was one heck of a race.  Starting at noon with a 1k LeMans start (which meant I had to run 1k around a pond in bike shoes) put me in a spot of bother from the beginning of the race.  I haven’t run in quite some time and I never ran in bike shoes with STIFF soles that don’t bend one bit.  My first 2 laps were completely plaqued by cramps in both my quads and hamstrings.  After the second lap, I almost fell off the bike because I couldn’t straighten or bend my legs.  Not such a good time.  Good thing we had a massage therapist in our team camp and she started right away on working them out.  Did it help??  Probably, but I could feel the soreness the rest of the race.

Our team strateragy was simple, I ride a lap, the teammate ride a lap, I ride a lap, he rides a lap and so on and so forth.  This kept me on the bike for about 50 minutes with a 50 minute or so break each time.  Around 2am, we decided to take a 30 minute break between laps to talk things over and give a little rest.  This might have hurt us in terms of placing, but we weren’t out there to win.  With this being our first 24 hour race, we wanted to just be competetive and have a ton of fun.  DONE AND DONE.  Overall, we finished 5th out of  15 teams which was a shock to us.  The team did a total of 21 laps with me doing 11 of them.  Good times for sure and we are already putting together a training schedule to put us on top of the box next year.

After that, I took some time off the bike as my keister was a little sore.  Following those 3 days off, I am now traveling for about 10 days or so.  First I was in Ogden Utah for the Rocky Mountain Xterra Championship, congrats to Jamie Whitmore for winning the women’s race, then it was off to Driggs Idaho to check out Yellowstone National Park (which I thought was a bit of waste of time….nothing to grand in that place to be honest).  I can honestly say I don’t think I will visit Yellowstone again as it wasn’t so impressive.  Way to much of a tourist trap for me.  While driving along, I saw 4 18 wheeler trucks and 2 Budwiser trucks.  Seriously, I saw 2 Budwiser trucks going through the center of Yellowstone National Park.  You know something has become over populated when you see Bud trucks coming through it.  Next will be Grand Teton National Park for a wedding this weekend (one of Kelly’s friends) and hopefully that will be much better then Yellowstone.  Kelly has been taking around 200 pictures a day, so it will be a while until I get to sort through all of those and get them posted.  Hopefully next week when I return I can get that done.

Other than that, I’ve just been “keeping it real” and relaxing while on the road.  I will try to post again (and sort through all the photos) as internet is available.

I have been quite busy lately and I must say that is sucks.  I went back home to the parents place for Father’s day just leaving Wednesday returning yesterday.  It was nice to see the family.  The only bad thing about it was not being able to ride the bike.  Ohh well, what can ya do.  I did get to introduce Campy to my parents bassett hound and I must say that was quite a show.

Kelly is still at her parents house from the trip so I think tonight will be a good ride.  I did get the new gear for the single speed so I will be rigging that up and head out for a long ride.  I am going to try for 2+ hours without lights if both the body and light holds out for me.  I do need to get out being the race is slowly creeping up on me.  I should be able to change over the cog real quick so I should be ok.  The only part that will slow me down is the 1.5ish mile I will have to ride on the road each way.  One gear on the road will eat up some time and I am WAY to lazy to switch my light over to the bike….should be a killer time…

Last night after work I got to sneak out for a quick hour ride.  I took the single speed 29er and I must say I absolutely LOVED it.  The trails I rode are the same ones I ride just about every day and I had so much more fun on them.  Yes, I hiked a little more because of the gearing, but other than that, I can’t complain one bit about the bike.  The new cog is in the mail so the gearing will be changed up soon and I need to retention the wheels as this was the 2nd ride on them since I built them.  They seems a little spongy after the ride was over.  I do have to admit that riding a hard tail is certainly a little different than the dualy I normal ride.  My back hurt pretty bad during the ride, but as soon as I got off the bike I was fine.  Seems as if I need to retrain myself to stand just a bit more now that I am on a single speed hard tail.  That plus I have some wicked blisters on my hands from gripping the bar that hard while climbing.  The new cog and the bar ends I ordered should fix that.

Yesterday and today seem to be the regular type days with no riding for me.  Things at this point just seem to be so busy.  I really need to become a morning person so I can get up and ride in the morning.  On a note of the bikes, my 26” geared bike is out of commission with a blown front fork.  It seems as if the bushings and what not are all torn up.  To be honest, it has been like that that since day one, so I always thought that is the way it just was.  I now believe that opinion was wrong.  Time to send it back to Fox and see what they can do with it.  So as of now, I am riding on the single speed 29er that is completely over geared.  I guess what doesn’t kill me, which it just might, will make me stronger.

 I was supposed to leave work a little early today to go for a ride, but my boss forgot his shoes, so here I sit at my desk looking at how beautiful it is outside.

Well, another weekend has passed and I have not gotten a ride in.  Saturday Kelly and I did a little shopping plus it was raining all day.  When I did get home and thought about riding, I thought it was more important to take the dog for a walk being she was in her cage most of the day.  Sunday came and we did some work in the garden.  Sure, I was digging holes and swinging an axe, but it still wasn’t riding.  I did however get my King hub all tightened up sI i can ride the single speed, but this morning when I woke up, my back was all messed up, probably from the shoveling and axe swinging.  Seems like tonight I will try to get out for a couple hour ride on the single speed.  That should work me over pretty well being it is over geared.