Thursday, July 17, 2008
Miracles Happen
She came home Saturday.
It turns out she got a bacterial infection while she was in the hospital that was resistant to antibiotics and that caused a lot of the trouble. We may never know what sent her there in the first place. With all that happened, the water got really muddy. They tell us that they don't think she had a stroke after all. Who knows.
At any rate, she's back for how ever long and even though she's not 100% yet, she's doing pretty good for now.
I missed all the races I planned for the weekend due to her coming home and we have a solid offer on our house. We had to meet with the Realtor regarding that a couple of times. All that and moving, living in two places, trying to sell a house, finding my damn socks (I have 14 single socks with no matches, how the hell does that happen?), strange places, weird noises, job stress and no bike riding in several days has left me closer to going Postal than not but I'll make it.
I am writing July off pretty much. ORAMM is in two weeks and I will be using it for training for Fool's Gold and the SM100, both in August.
It's all good.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Funfest Races
The Kingsport Crit is on Sunday in downtown Kingsport and I plan to be there ready to dole out some punishment. I don't want to say to much so as not to give away anything to my competition that may read this between now and then, let's just say I have something special planned. 'Nuff said.
Monday is for the Mountain Bike Rally at Bays Mountain in Kingsport. This is an all gravel road course that has some nasty climbing and usually ends up being a free-for-all for the top spots. Definitely a disadvantageous course for singlespeeds but I am not letting that bother me. I will take my happy 32X17 running ass down there and give it a go. Last year I got 4th in age group and I think 9th or 10 overall. This year I want to win and I'm crazy enough to think and believe I can!
We'll see how it goes.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Ouch @%#^#*&!!!
Those words along with a streak of colorful expletives came gushing from my mouth tonight shortly after being nailed 7 times by Yellow Jackets while riding off-road at Buffalo Mtn with The Great White Goat, Scooby and Mike B. We were descending from the top of the mountain and I cam around the corner and the first one nailed me in the top of the head. I went a few yards and stopped to take my helmet off and the little bastards shang-haied me.Lucky I am not terribly allergic to them or it might have been bad. Where we were is pretty in accessible except by bike, hike, horse or ATV. I warned my buddies and we kept riding. I got bad chills and felt really crummy but other than that, I am fine.
I hate Yellow Jackets.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
8 Years of Home Maintenance in 8 Days
All in all it has been a pretty damn stressful and exhausting time. In typical Duckman fashion, I jumped and then looked where I was going. If we had spread the work out over several weeks, it wouldn't have been so overwhelming but it is what it is.
Now I just hope somebody buys it soon so I can get back to my regularly scheduled life.
Um... some stuff went to the dump so there wasn't any reason not to throw it off the deck.
The garage is the staging area for all our stuff. It all is going to one of three places: with us, to the dump or to Goodwill.Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Ride till ya puke
I picked a route that is only about 12 miles long and has in addition to the main climbs, a lot of little rolling hills and one loop that is perfect for hill repeats. I suck at climbing and it is something I work on continually. In fact, I don't really train for anything else, just climbing and let everything else take care of itself. I suck that bad at it. Some people that I ride with will vehemently disagree that I suck as a climber and maybe in certain circles, I climb very good but the circle that really matters is the guys I race against and compared to the upper echelon of them, I SUCK! I know part of the problem is my size. At 5'11" and 190# ( I am working on it) , I outweigh a lot of my competition by a good 30 or 40 pounds. So I train in the hills a lot.
We have lots of rolling hills like this that make riding here really good (except for the traffic). The loop I used tonight basically consisted of a lot of this kind of stuff with a few evil surprises along the way.The first one is in the "loop" I talked about and it goes up to Miller Perry school. It is about 3/4 of a mile long and starts off easy but kicks up at the top.
After that, you have about 1/4 mile of slightly downhill easy spinning and you turn onto Eastern Star Rd and have another 1/2 mile gradual climb that's great for power intervals.
I like to go from telephone pole to telephone pole and go as hard as I can between them and rest between the next ones alternating between the two. That's great for simulating attacks and recovery that is one of my weaknesses in racing.Next comes more spinning for about 3/4 mile and back to the base of Miller Perry hill. I usually do anywhere from1 to 5 of these depending on how smarmy I feel. Tonight I did two. After the loops, I go on generally back towards home but first I have to scale a real SOB on Ford Creek Rd.
The pictures don't do these justice. What you are looking at is about 200 yds of 7% or so grade and then it kicks up for 75 yds to over 15%. It really hurts.After that, it's on to Buffalo Ridge rd in roughly 3 miles. Buffalo Ridge takes you to the highest point in the 37615 zip code and the climb starts off with about 200 yds @ 10-12% then backs off to about 7% for another 300yds and then kicks up just a bit right at the top.
In a couple of years, this former farm will be filled with 200K and up houses. Such is the trend where I live. Farms are disappearing in favor of yuppie neighborhoods with SUV driving soccer moms that hate guys on bikes. It used to be a great place to ride now it's not so much.Oh well.
Anyway, the whole workout takes about an 1 to 1.5 hours to complete depending on how many loops I do and I am never more than 5 miles from home making it super convenient.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Beach
Since I have nothing bike related to talk about, I'll share some pics from last week's beach trip.
Enjoy.
We stayed at this really nice place.


And the pool and this thing called the Lazy River - a man-made "river" that you floated in on inner tubes. We spent alot of time there.
A lot of time...........



Checked out the hotties........

Posed for this picture with aforementioned hottie and our son...... I had to start wearing clothes on the second day because I apparently suck at sunscreen application and consequently had a nasty sunburn on my stomach in the shape of Eastern Europe after the first day.

We played in the ocean...............

A lot..................

And the hot tub................

One of us went under water for the first time without holding his nose.........

We built sand castles.......................

And ate fresh fish.........................

Really fresh fish.............
We saw some cool boats like this 120' Cat.......

We rode this boat................
Lotsa water..........
More water..............
Some dude got sick. It was funny but we were good............
Our motel from the ocean............
More ocean fun.............
It doesn't say anything about pants. It was tempting............................ but I was good.....
It was a welcome break before coming home and spending all that time getting the house ready to sell. Maybe someday I can get back on my bike and ride some.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Cowbell Challenge 2008 - Full Circle

Ah it is what it is. Me and Chris had never teamed up before and we rode together like we had been teamates for years. It was a blast to do a race and ride each lap as fast as I could and actually pass people for a change (I only got passed once, by Nat Ross). The upsides of team racing. Some of the downsides are the nervousness of waiting and the constantly calculating time. What time did Chris go out? What time do I need to go again? If I make a mistake how much harder do we have to ride to make the time up? It is all about time. Each of us had on average about 25 minutes to rest between laps before we had to get ready to go again. Hardly enough time to really rest but it wasn't so much that you got cold and stiff. I don't think we could have rode any faster or done anything much different.
It was a blast.Thanks to Chris, Nancy for the food and cold towels and the driving and the pics and the everything else, Nathan (he was so cute grabbing my bottle from my bike and refilling it between laps), and all my sponsors: Vassago, WTB, White Bros, Ergon, Crank Bros, Carbo Rocket, and Under Armour for the help. Y'all rock.
Also to Taylor and all the volunteers for putting on a great race and to whoever maintains the trails at Fisher Farms, It's a really nice place.

The start was fast and dusty. Some dude ate it just after this pic was taken. It looked painful.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Need More Cowbell

Monday, June 16, 2008
Rocky Raccoon and the Decathalon
Sure he looks cute but I am certain he would have ripped out my throat if he could have. There's nothing like a cute, furry, scared, caged animal to bring out the worst in a critter. He was a hell of a lot better off in my hands than if some of the others I work with would have got ahold of him.
Not much in the way of riding for me this past weekend. In getting our house ready to sell, I participated in the Home Improvement Decathalon. Events included:
- Mowing and Triming
- Painting
- Cleaning
- Packing up clutter and sorting through it
- House and deck washing
- Cutting and trimming shrubs
- Landscaping
- Cleaning
- Cleaning
- More cleaning
I got rained out of most of what I needed to accomplish on Saturday so we did the next best thing - went and saw Kung Fu Panda with Nathan and Nancy so it wasn't a total waste.
Sunday came and a lot of work got done along with Father's Day stuff and I finally got out for a couple of hours of pedaling in the afternoon. Nothing hard, just enough intensity to keep my legs fresh for the Cowbell coming up next weekend.
I have a fairly light riding schedule this week:
30 minutes today
1 hour Tuesday with 2-3 hill repeats >2 min each.
2 hours tempo on Wednesday.
Thursday will be for packing and Friday is a travel day.
Peace out.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Back to a routine
Tonight I met a bunch of roadies at the TNR ride that meets on the campus of ETSU. I will admit my legs still feel a little dead and I don't know if that's from not being recovered (I feel fine and have a huge desire to ride - two indicators that I'm recovered). Plus my resting pulse rate is back to it's normal range - 48 so I think it's more of a fact that the races I do all tend to be ones where you put it on cruise control for a really long time and there really isn't a huge amount of high intensity in there anywhere. I think tonight my legs didn't have the snap that they should because of that. Otherwise I felt great. I never feel like I climb well but at the top of Buffalo there was a lot more people behind me than there was in front of me so I guess I did fine.
Keeping up with roadies on a singlespeed is tough. You gotta get real creative with bursts of 120+ rpm pedaling and coasting/drafting off of others. At 30mph and up, pedaling is pretty much useless. I have learned to tuck in real tight in the draft and on descents to hang on for the climbs and rollers where I can pretty much hold my own for the biggest part.
I could go bigger on the gear but that would suck on some of the climbs we have around here.
I have canceled my plans for the xc race this Sunday at Haw Ridge. Our house goes on the market Jul 1 and we have a ton of stuff to do between now and then to get it ready. Since we are going to be gone next week to the Cowbell and then on to the beach for three days, this weekend is going to be a house work blitzkrieg. I'll get a couple of short rides in somewhere but for the biggest part, I'm going to be working my butt off.

























