08/21/05 - Longest ride of the year...

On Saturday I drove up to my moms to do some yard work, and on Sunday I rode the Mojo back home. I set out at 6:45am for the 69 mile journey, and about 4 and a half hours later I was back home. Needless to say, I am toast. This ride has a little bit of everything... nicely paved roads, dirt roads, gravel roads, bike trails, and so on. Lots of climbing too.

Ride Details:
69 Miles
4 hours 29 minutes
15.2 mph average speed

Consumed:
6 PowerGel
1 Clif Builder Bar
18oz Powerbar Endurance Drink
60 oz water

Rutted gravel road climb about 2 hours into the ride

Paved bike path about 5 miles from home

08/20/05 - Excellent Leadville Trail 100 writeup...

Here's an excellent LT100 writeup by Fat Cyclist:
Part I
Part II

More later...

08/16/05 - Easy ride...with a few hills...

Todays Ride:
Relatively easy ride today with John. We did a total of 24 miles in about 1 hour 30 minutes mixing in a couple steep climbs to get the blood flowing. I installed my new Cateye 7 Wireless on my Ibis, so it'll be fun to finally keep track of distance, average speed, etc.... especially during races. Tommorrow I'm just going to do a few short intervals, then on Thursday I might head out to West Branch State Park to check out the trails out there. I've never been, so it should be fun.

Other Workouts/Training:
None today... or the rest of the week. This is my rest week as far as lifting goes.

In Other News:
Results for the Leadville Trail 100 MTB Race are up. Someday I will do this race!

08/14/05 - No Bikes Allowed?

Todays Ride:
Today I was up and out the door at 6:30am for a long ride aboard the Mojo. The plan was to do this new trail I found last week, and I wanted to get there early before the joggers and hikers were out. I got to the trailhead about 6:45am and was greeted by a big "NO BIKES" sign. Just great! So I just ended up riding the road that meandered alongside the trail, then climbed up out of the valley I was in, then back down to a trail that I ride quite often. I ended up doing about 3 hours and a total of 43.5 miles. Climbing was kept to a minimum, but there were 3-4 pretty good ones along the way. I'm spent, and I gotta run to my moms place for the day, so I'm out.... tommorrow is a rest day.

Other Workouts/Training:
None today.

08/11/05 - Some nasty hill work...

Todays Ride:
Climbing is definitely one of my weaknesses. We simply don't have a lot of good climbs around here, so my training rides tend to be pretty flat with just a few short climbs here and there. After the Racoon Rally race, where the looooooonnngggg climbs really kicked my ass, I decided to try and get some more hill work in during my training. Today I set out on my heavy fully rigid Diamond Back Apex for a ride that consisted of 6 good climbs.... none are really that long, but each is pretty steep, and in fact 5 of them are tough granny gear efforts. This is about as good as it gets around here I'm afraid, but working these 6 climbs into my training about once a week will definitely help. I know of a few other long road climbs, so I will try and incorporate them too. Overall the ride was just shy of 2 hours and about 30 miles in total. How do I know how far I went? I finally mounted my Cat Eye Enduro 2 computer (see pic above)... which had been sitting on my workbench for about a year!

Other Workouts/Training:
None today. Tommorrow is a rest day as far as biking goes, but I will be doing my upper body bicep and tricep workout.

In Other News:
Check out these pics from the 2005 Great Divide Mountain Bike Race!

08/10/05 - Intervals... in my living room?

Todays Ride:
Didn't have a lot of time today, so I woke up early and did an hours worth of intervals while watching the morning news. Pretty good workout actually.... started out with a 20 minute warmup, then a couple 1 minute intervals, then 2 minutes, then 3 minutes, then 4 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 4 minutes, then 3 minutes... you get the idea. Gotta love my indoor trainer when time is limited and I just need to get in a quick workout!

Other Workouts/Training:
None today, but yesterday was a pretty hard lifting workout.... upper body chest and shoulders.

08/07/05 - Another Sunday hammerfest...

Todays Ride:
My knee is back to 100% now, so its time to start increasing the mileage again. This morning I left my driveway around 7am and headed for the Kent State University campus via some back streets and a paved multi-purpose trail that spills out into the city of Kent, Ohio. It took about 45 minutes to get to campus, then I rode around about an hour checking out all the changes they've made since I attended KSU about 15 years ago. Damn, they have fancied that place up quite a bit. On the way back from campus I added in a few short/steep climbs to make things interesting, and finally arrived back home just before 10:30am. Overall I felt great, so I rewarded myself with a huge breakfast, then crashed in front of the idiot box for the rest of the day.

Other Workouts/Training:
None.