Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Turkey Day

Our family has grown and it showed this Turkey day. My 4 siblings, plus 2 spouses, plus mom and dad, and 2 uber active babies makes for a full house in Rochester.
I can sum up the eating this weekend by saying that for leftover lunch on Friday I at 3 pieces of different pies along with my turkey sandwich. So sweet.
Ben and I managed a few rides...one of which was on Thursday morning with the a group of Rochester riders. It ended up being a good ride, but less intense than the race pace end to the Swanson Turkey fest.
After the ride, we practiced our skills.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Diversity

No, not the PC initiative, but my workouts this time of year.

I try to switch things up this time of year with different activities.
Here is my typical fall week:
Monday - Run at Lunch
Tuesday - Night ride at Leb
Wed - Early AM hockey and ride at lunch w/ coworkers
Thurs - 5 K Turkey Trot race at Seagate
Friday - Early AM Hockey
Sat - Wussed out on State CX but went for Run to shake the legs out
Sun - Eventually got in a good ride...see below.
The cool thing is that I was only away from Tegan for the Tues and Sunday rides. People ask how to make a family work...flexibility.
The highlights of the above activities started Tuesday night where on my 3rd and final lap, I fell off the log ride at Leb and slightly separated my shoulder. I has since healed but lesson learned not to push my luck when things start getting wet from dew/frost.
Next was the 5K. While a couple of my co-workers who are runners did 18 minute 5k's I managed 21 minutes flat. Given that I had only run 3 times in the past year, I knew I would be sore...yup, so sore that State CX on Saturday was out of the question.
Sunday, oh man, carnage.... 4 FLATS! I haven't really flatted all year other than a burp or two. I was trying to ride Mammoth and pinched my rear tire on the train tracks twice. The Stan's was dry. Then I put a tube in and pinched that on Skull loop. I walked my bike back to the car defeated.
Our plan was to head up to Bob and Julies (Jen's parents) to hang out that afternoon, so I decided I should ride there via the River Bottoms to the Sibley house, across the 35E bridge, and then all the way up Lexington to Shoreview. I ended up finding Chris, Danno, and Wenk down at the River on their group ride, so I rode w/ Chris....until a stick grabbed my valve stem and ripped it of! Fisher and I spent 15 minutes trying to extract a mangled valve stem before getting rolling again.
I finally made it to Shoreview after riding in Rain/Sleet/Snow for the last 1.5 hours. Not the most pleasant weather, but I stayed reasonably warm. In the end, I got some riding in, but I think someone up there was trying to tell me not to=)

Monday, November 05, 2007

CX etc

The weather this weekend was just awesome. It was sunny and 55 both days, so I made the most of it.
Saturday, I waited until the last minute (spending time with my little dude) and headed up to race CX at Ham Lake...on my hardtail of course. I got there 20 minutes before the start, but as seems to be the norm, it ended up starting late.
The course was pan flat but fun with some pavement and some doubletrack in the woods. The start was a bit of a cluster: down hill 2-3 bikes wide with a barrier about 1/4 mile up. I got to the line late and was in the 4th row or so but a few nice guys pushed me into the 2nd row before the start. I stayed near the middle of the 40 man pack because I had never dismounted for a high speed barrier before...I ended up making it! After the first several laps, I found myself in a group of ~8-10 riders. While I easily broke away in the twisty wooded areas, they would work together and easily haul me back on the 1/2 mile flat stretch of pavement. At that point, I just decided to ride in the group. It was basically a tempo ride pace from there on, as we slowly picked off and dropped people. In the end, Patty Cakes (GP rider Pat Lemiux) and I were the only ones left out of the group, and he outsprinted me for 6th place.
Once again, I had fun, worked hard but not too hard, was the only A racer on a mtbk, and learned a lot about CX. Equipment lessons learned for next time (rules I broke this time): water bottles, cages, and knee warmers aren't necessary or cool =)

You can read about Sundays adventure at Battle Creek here. Riding that 100 foot retaining wall was cool!

Peace out.