Whoops, been doing nothing good

Yes, yes, I haven’t been as faithful in writing as I should. Seems to be a theme, I write about something like riding a bike, then don’t ride for three weeks and then think I should ride then I write about that and then stay off the bike again for three weeks. That isn’t a good way to get in shape, so I must change something.

The change is I am picking out two races to do and get ready for them. In getting ready for those I hope that I am able to parlay that into some fitness for the Iron Mountain 100k. Personally I need something to get me out of the door to ride, a goal or something. It has always been easier for me to get motivated when I have a goal. Usually that involves trying to keep up with someone at a race, but I haven’t yet found the arch enemy I need here in Virginia, partly because I like the folks I ride with and partly because I seem to have lost the competitive desire this year.

Why? Well aside from what feels like an entire year of a bit of fitness followed by a three week illness, followed by actual fitness, followed by actual real life need meds to get over illness, I can’t seem to find a groove. At this point a rut of riding too slow everyday and not improving fitness would be welcome. Leaving the house seems like and is a struggle. And I have had a sore throat for the last month plus. It was gone for almost three days of pain free like, then it came back with a vengeance. Not loving that.

Well, sore throat and all I am leaving the house for a bit of this.

I need a ride, a dry happy healthy fun ride.

I hope you do as well.

Is there nothing to report?

No, not a thing.

But I will jabber on about nothing for a few lines then call it a day.

This weekend was good, actually very nice. I rode two days with good people and had a good time. Now the ride where all at Fountainhead, which means I did 33 miles in two days which isn’t good, but I am getting over an infection and trying to cut off my finger. I will type again, don’t stick your finger in a spinning disc brake rotor, not fun at ALL.

Ummm, rain here today, sooooo, instead of riding as I should I am sitting here typing away. It isn’t a great way to spend a day, you know eating food, watching TV and being an American, well I am, but I try not to be the typical couch potato. Today is a washout, but tomorrow, hopefully won’t be. The forecast isn’t much better however.

Wish I was rolling up the little hill today.

Big chairs for big Americans!

Getting some health care today. Not dying just a bit ill. Sore throat aninconvience not death but getting care is always a little hard. My primary care doc can’t see me for 3weeks so do I head to the ER and sit hours or what? Well, or what. I am currently sitting In a normal sized chair waiting for my drugs, and trust me they aren’t good.

Some of these chairs are incredible, normal? Well mine is, most others are huge, like twice as big as normal. Are we as a group that large? This is for  the normal American ever larger chairs and ever larger people?  I hope not, because I am personally trying not to need size that is literally almost two seats for one person.  My lovely and wonderful and ever positive says the larger chairs are for kids and parent to sit in together…..  however all I see is on person who fits in the chair watching their kids run around and scream.  They should make smaller chairs for us so that maybe we would loose the weight and fit in the chairs.

I also cut my finger on a spinning disc rotor….  my advise, don’t do it.  Your finger will bleed a lot and then hurt a bit more and make you miss a race that I kind of wanted to do.  Aside from that, sitting around the house hoping to get healthy didn’t make me happy, in fact it made me pretty grumpy but very successful at Modern Warfare 3.  Not something to be very proud of.  Whatever.

 

Hope you folks are well, no sore throats out there and watch those fingers!

 

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A quick one….

Had a good weekend. Mostly. Should have raced, but I forgot, yes, forgot. Oh well, I did an 80 mile road ride. It was fun. It wasn’t all road either. It was a road, gravel, and access road ride.

Fun. WIll I do the same ride again? No. I took a wrong turn and ended up doing the same road, almost completely, twice. Whatever, it was good.

Apparently my Fountainhead rant has garnered a whole bunch of trail conditions google search hits. Let me say this now. Fountainhead is in great shape. The new trails are really good, the old ones are the same and the middle aged ones are not very flowing or fun but required to be done to finish the loop. The middle aged ones retain water and are not great. Not the worst ever, but they really let the whole system down. One of these days I will write a new rant, mostly positive, but for now…..

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Flats! Flats! Flats!

That how many front tire flats I’ve had in the last week and a half! Also the tire of doom, which is what I have taken to calling the tire that threw me to the earth in a crash of epic proportions (okay, I clipped a tree and then was ejected while riding and hit another tree) was going flat at the time of the crash. I need to figure out if the tire continuing to deflate is a rim, tire taping or tire problem. There are enough rock to put cuts in my sidewalls that can’t be sealed by Stan’s (which seals a whole lot of holes in my tires). So today is another tire swap day….. tired of of changing tires.

What else? A lot of local rides. Trying to figure out if I can do a Tour of SO(uthern)NO(orhtern)V(irgini)A or the Tour of SONOVA. That would connect all the local parks into one big loop. It would involve a bit of road that isn’t ideal to ride on, but I need to get to parks from other parks. So a bit of bad roads that stink hopefully will lead to a good ride. Oh, I have done the entire, sans and actual lap of Laurel Hill, and it was just at 47 miles, with the loop of Laurel Hill, looking at 50 plus miles easily. If the weather holds I will be trying the loop on Friday.

Anything else? Ummm, not really. Just trudging along with allergies and sniffly nose and trying to look cool….. So I am definitely having allergy problems.

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Home again

Back in the VA and yesterday was a good ride. Maybe a little long, but good. Johnny B ruined me at Fountainhead. He ruined me enough to the point of I am debating taking the day off. All told yesterday was 45ish or so miles. A good ride.

Rothrock, well I am still a bit impressed and am currently planning a trip back to the area for another go round on the trails north of the area we rode last weekend. A(ron) Hubbard showed me around the area very well, so well in fact I took very few pictures. I have seen water before…..

So what now? Well I am taking my broken and somewhat demoralized self out for a ride, a slow easy short (about an hour) ride. Then do what? Not sure. Oh, yeah, I must go shopping for food. Food is good.

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In Huntingdon….. Yeah, PA

Did Raystown Lake trail system yesterday and had a good time. It is more like MidMO than I think anyone around here would like to admit, but it really is like a very large and long Berryman Trail. I snapped a few picks but currently have no way to download the photos, so none today. What else?

Well this week has been pretty good, allergies aside, for riding. The trails in the NO(rthern)V(irgini)A have been fast and fun and fast and dry and just a little loose and fun lately so I have been all about the two wheeled knobby machine. I like that bike. But, the road bike is going to need to be my friend very soon.

I need miles and miles of riding. Just time in the saddle….. ack! Bacon making lots of noise in the kitchen! I need to pay attention to making breakfast not talking about what is so wrong with my life….. nothing!

Be good ride safe and the LOBOS are in Liege, good luck boys, those climbs are steep. I will be thinking of you and laughing all at the same time.

Looking good, as you can't see my face

So, I am not cross fit

Personally I think it is a kind of silly activity. Hanging out in a gym jumping up an down, snatching things off the ground, collapsing afterwards and then high fiving everyone at the workout session. Full disclosure is that I am unable to even try cross fit due to my torn up Achilles. So maybe I am jealous… maybe not…. in any case there is a reason I mention cross fit.

At the trail today a SUV with a lot of decals promoting a certain cross fit studio (gym?) had two very fit looking guys get out of it. They were slim, trim, and very fast looking fellows, both with bicycles that while not top notch, were pretty close. I was hoping that they would leave before me as i hate getting passed on the trail. I have to work to keep up with or even try to pass the people who pass me, sometimes I am successful, other times I get my lunch taken and made to realize I am a 40(ish) 225 pound(ish) fellow who used to be pretty quick.

Well the cross fit guys left a few minutes before me so I was relieved I wouldn’t have to try to keep up with them. But less than three minutes into my ride what do I see? Two little cross fitters just ahead of me. Again, I must stress, I am by no means belittling cross fit, I just don’t get it. Shortly after seeing them ahead of me I passed them like they were sitting still, well that was mostly because they were sitting still. No sooner had I passed than I heard one of the guys say something like we should keep up with him he doesn’t look fast…… well true enough, I am not fast, like I said, pretty quick.

So what to do? Drop the hammer of them, let them catch me and then drop the hammer, just keep riding? I choose to just keep going at my usual pace. Not soon after, I knew they were chasing I did a few glances over my shoulder to see where they were… at first they seemed to be keeping up, but pretty quickly it became clear being kind of quick was going to kill these guys. So I am not cross fit, but I guess I will call myself bike quick. Yes dropping them was too easy, maybe it was their first ride ever, or maybe I just felt good, or maybe I misheard what was said and turned up the gas for no reason, or maybe I just don’t think cross fit is cycling fit and these guys showed me I might just be right.

I had a really good ride today and felt pretty good. It was a good day. I hope the cross fit guys had a good ride too.

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A few line about a few rides

So this week has the potential of being on of my “biggest” in a long time and that would be only because of two road rides. You can rack up miles when you ride on the road. Kind of nice to see a week of milage getting close to 200 miles…. I think maybe I should have to ride one mile for every pound I weigh… man that would be a loooooooooooong way! Not sure that would actually be possible. So now, back to reality.

The road rides were fun, but full of pollen and when I got home I spent about three hours sneezing and sniffling and feeling like i had a faucet for a nose. Now those feelings may not sound all that fun but a large man like myself needs to do something to stem the tide of ever increasing waist line, so ride and then suffer it is.

The other rides where at Fountainhead and well, Fountainhead, and well Fountainhead again…. sounds like a rut. Today will also be, well, Fountainhead…. and maybe Laurel Hill if I ride to Fountainhead. Now some of you folk(s) reading this might think I am in a rut and what can I say? I might be. But Fountainhead isn’t a terribly bad rut to be in.

Sitting here and thinking and reading the above I am inclined to get in my car and drive to Gambrill just to ride someplace different or even grab the road bike and head out the door to see something different, but really I would like to go back and ride FH again and see if I can finally ride one lap without one “what the hell was I doing there moment” and keep up with Johnny B…. I do believe I may never keep up with JB… but one good lap, I suppose I may one day accomplish. Have a great day, I am closing this laptop and heading out the door as soon as I post this. Ride safe, watch out for Pedestrians (one got killed in San Fran this week by some fool riding his bike who needs to me charged with manslaughter) and ride safe.

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Mother Nature is trying to kill me

The pollen is so thick it feels like it literally bouncing off my eyes, skins and is just clinging to everything it touches. Not fun at all. Really I feel like the current weather is going to force me inside for a few days. Trees are lovely, flowering trees are wonderful, but I AM TIRED OF THEM RIGHT NOW. It would be nice if Spring would sprung and then go away.

Today should have been a great day for a ride except for the wind and the pollen. Well, if you are immune to pollen and love riding into the wind it would have been a great day, I however don’t like either wind and pollen. Struggling to get 13 miles from home while being (almost literally) attacked by Mother Nature was not fun. My bike is yellow from the pollen. Am I whining? Yes.

Tomorrow I will be out riding at Fountainhead. I want to and I am trying a new stem out. It is a bit shorter. After my little crash at EF I have decided the maybe I ride a bike a bit longer than I should. I wish I could have seen the crash. I think it must have looked good. Like Shaq rejecting me for a dunk. I suspect it felt about the same too.

I am off to get some new allergy eye drops so that hopefully I can see. I am driving to the Pharmacy, and if you read above, I would stay off the roads for the next hour or so…..

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