Sundays are for Bike Riding...

Arrow Bikes tomorrow (Sunday 9:00 am)...

Group rolls from Dunkin Donughts in Capitol Hill @ 8:30 if you want to roll up there from the city...

Sweetness..

I'm borrowing this picture of Kelly controlling the pack. From all the pictures I've seen from this past year, I don't think anyone does the leadout or going to the front better than Kelly:



Yea...legit. One day R1V is going to pull off one of those in a race and it is going to be awesome.

This time of year sucks donkey...

the upbringing won't let me finish that...

1) A ten win season is not going to happen...maybe 9-3 and a BCS Bowl game win?! Is that too much to ask for Santa? Go Hokies...Miami is for suckas.

2) The rain sucks.

3) Lack of riding is making me a foul mooded man.

4) I think one of my dogs took a piss on my bike...that sucked.

Sunday I'm riding, rain or shine.

Cheers...

Thank you, may I have another...

I may not be the first one to say this, but Dang those harley boys are fast.

I showed up on Tuesday down at HP hoping for a good little workout. Got there a little late so I started my reverse lap to hope to meet up with a group enjoying some exercise on Veteran's day (thank you all)...again, who do I see, Mr. "F#ck it" speed (Chuck Hutch) driving a group of four which included a teammate of his, Dan from Coppi, and another dude who was working hard as well. I latched onto the back and decided this was what I was looking for. With this group there were two things that were going to happen:

1) I drop everybody like a bad habit
2) I hold on for dear life and hope to sneek in one lap, maybe two if I'm lucky.

There was about a 0.0001% of #1 happening that day...maybe ever, so let the suffering begin.

I took a couple of pulls as we were cordial, but working on the first lap. On the backstretch, Chuck and his boy (Butts?) decided to sprint for the line, which dropped all of us. This was my first lap, so I fought to catch back up and got back on by the start of the second lap. Now it was just the three of us. The Harley guys trading pulls, and me holding on for dear life. I felt bad that I was wheel sucking, but really...it was all I could do. They didn't seem to mind all that much (I chatted Chuck up afterwards a little and he said all that mattered was that he beat Butts to the line) so I just went from one wheel to the other while they kept the pace up around ridiculous speed. On the back side, the pace slowed a little and they started looking at each other...I knew what was coming, so I geared down and started picking up the pace..but it didn't matter. Next thing you know, I was watching them ride away from me and I started my cooldown a little earlier than planned.

I went looking for a beat down and I found it thanks to two boys from Harley...thank you, I'll take another next time we meet.



On a side note, I was at a bar once with a bunch of them watching a couple of DJs (My boy Hanz and Ian from Harley) and I'm sure that I can drink more beer than any of them....not a challenge, but I need something. ;)

I'm hoping December is better than November, cause November has been pretty disapointing on the bike.

Cheers...

Winter training plan

My winter training regime is in full swing.

After doing absolutely nothing on the bike for the past week, I rode a total of 0 miles this past weekend. Right now I am 100% dedicated to my winter plan which has three main parts:

1) Watch college football games. I usually do a couple of hard efforts to the fridge and back for cold beer and several repeats of chips to the salsa bowl.

2) Look at my bike and wonder what day would be best to clean it..this is followed by the realization that cleaning seems like a lot of work, and tomorrow is the best day for work.

3) Feel disgusted with myself and wonder at what point am I not allowed to call myself a cyclist and become just a hoarder of cycling gear.

Today is a day off for work and I'm going to try to go to Hains Point for lunch to get my @ss handed to me. There is no better motivation that seeing the pack roll away from you and knowing that at your current fitness, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it...just what the doctor ordered.

Cheers.

Some pictures from DCCX...

Just downloaded them...three of them are worth anything...the rest were taken after free beer and are better left offline.

Brandon running the barriers like a pro...


Saunders working his way through his own personal pain cave...


The Lumm boys partaking in some post race beverage...


Cheers..

Team Ride #1

I love group rides...always have. Getting up and going to meet a bunch of guys to go ride bikes in the cold early morning makes riding the bike in the off season (and the cold weather) bearable. Now, going out and doing a group TEAM ride is A+.

I organized a team ride yesterday to try to get our guys and gals together to get excited about the upcoming road season. Nothing crazy and nothing too fast, just an opportunity to get out and ride with teammates that we haven't seen in a while. I think we had somewhere between 30 and 35 guys at the start. I didn't get a count, which I should have, but we had a bunch. We picked up a few along the way as well which was cool. We rolled out towards Great Falls on the Maryland side and then did a reverse semi loop of the Saturday 10 am ride. It ended up being about 50 miles. What I learned:

1) Every group ride needs at least two critical people. One who stays towards the front and guides the way or tells everyone where they need to turn (this becomes less critical if the route is the same every time). The other is the sweeper...the guy/gal who also knows the route and makes sure nobody gets dropped who doesn't know the route. We lost one at one point during the ride and I felt bad because he didn't know where we were in relation to back home. I thought we had everyone (the count at the beginning may have helped) when we did that little crazy right/left over the bridge on Glen. I felt really bad too because I advertised our ride as "conversational" pace only. We weren't rolling, but going hard enough...next time I'll keep the pace lower and make sure nobody else takes off.

2) All rides should start/stop at some place that serves coffee, snacks, and/or beer. It makes the ride feel more pro. I'm talking out of my ass on this one, but it just felt right to start the ride at a coffee shop as opposed to a bike shop or at an intersection somewhere. Brandon and I were craving beers after the ride (nothing wrong with beer 1 being before 12:30), so the next ride needs to end up at a bar...sweet.

3) Riding with the team really made feel as a part of something special. The "everybody" group rides are nice, but there is a sense of anonymity that I don't like. Rolling through the city we rode two wide and 15+ deep...it felt and looked real pro (or at least as pro as a bunch of weekend warriors can look). We still need to work on how to ride on two lane roads so that subconsciously everybody know when to single file it up or when it is safe to ride two to three wide...

All in all, awesome. I'm planning to have one of these team rides at least once a month through the off season and eventually turn them into our skills and drills sessions as the season comes closer. Really looking forward to it.

Cheers...