Miracles Happen

On March 25th of this year, my mom entered the hospital with all the signs of having had a mild stroke. On March 29th, she fell while in the hospital and developed a subdural hematoma that began to grow over the following week. On April 1st, after being in emergency surgery for 10 hours to ease pressure on her brain, we were told that they could not get her to stop bleeding and that she probably would not live. Twice more during the next three months, we were faced with seemingly insurmountable odds about her survival.

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.

Funfest Races

This weekend in conjunction with Kingsport's Funfest there is three cycling events: The Tour De Possum Creek, The Kingsport Crit and the Funfest Mountain Bike Rally. The TDPC is a 40ish mile road race (in the past it was billed as a fun ride that turned into a full on race. Now they finally made it official and are paying out cash). It rolls through some really scenic and really hilly parts of Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. To bad I gotta work. I'm going to miss this one.



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.

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.

UPDATE: I woke up this morning and one eye was swollen shut. How bout that.

Did I mention I hate Yellow Jackets?

8 Years of Home Maintenance in 8 Days

We have been working on our house to get it in selling shape and for the last 8 days, we have done pretty much nothing except move stuff, clean, sort, haul stuff to the dump (11 trips - no shit), haul stuff to Goodwill, fix a leaky water pressure regulator, pressure wash house, deck and driveway, fix nail holes in walls and paint, paint outside of house and garage doors, mow, trim, cut up and haul off brush from where lightning struck a tree in our yard, box, pack and move stuff we are taking with us. We scrubbed that mother from top to bottom and inside out.

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.

New paint.

Um... some stuff went to the dump so there wasn't any reason not to throw it off the deck.

Cleaned, painted and landscaped.

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.

Nathan's artistic rendering of me painting the door.

Deck washed and ready for stain.

Back door sanded, masked and ready for paint.

Ride till ya puke

I have a training philosophy that is based on nothing in particular but it seems to work for me. The less time I have available to train, the harder I go. It's simple and the area in which I live makes it very easy to do. Gray Tennessee is full of rolling hills that go from mild to "aw shit". Today I did a workout that hurts like the dickens but is very effective and I definitely toed the Duckman party line of training.

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.

The sorta easy part.

A little tougher.

The puke zone.

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.

The start of Buffalo Ridge.

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.

Beach

It was no riding for me this past weekend. In fact the closest I got to a bicycle was moving them in and out of the garage as we had a massive weekend of getting our house ready to sell. Me and Nancy put in two 12 hour days over the weekend painting, cleaning, trimming, mowing, moving, sorting and throwing out 10 years of accumulated crap.


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.

With a great view of the beach and the ocean.

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...........

I bought this cool towel.................

And this cool hat..........

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................

It was cool...........

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.

Cowbell Challenge 2008 - Full Circle

The 2008 Cowbell Challenge in addition to being a fun race, was also the one year date for me riding 29er's. Last year's Cowbell was the first time I ever rode a 29er and I haven't looked back.

This year's event was somewhat cooler than last year and at a new venue. Fisher Farms is a beautiful place with a nice 4 or so miles of singletrack that is tight and flowy fast with a few technical challenges along the way and very little climbing to speak of. The balance of the course included some wide open field sections and three short climbs that made up for the lack of climbing elsewhere.

It began like all races should, with a mass start. I understand the methodology behind the LeMans start, prologue laps and other things that promoters try to spread out the riders before entering the singletrack but none of them work really. The first lap of any of these races always ends up being a KLSTRPHK. I went first and had heavy traffic to deal with despite having a decent position going into the singletrack about 30 back from the front. I was in some company that I am not used to being in; Ernesto Marenchin and Nat Ross were not far ahead of me, I could see Dicky (no pun intended), Dave Holmes, Josh Tostado, and alot of really fast guys. Things were going good until we came to some rocks and a tree root and I got hung up with the dude in front of me. Imagine a five car chain reaction on the Interstate, same kind of thing. I don't know how many people got by me but I was in a whole new group of people and they were riding slower than I wanted and I began picking them off until it happened again. A guy blew one of the skinnies and jammed us all up. It smoothed out after that and I just rode as fast as I could and tried to get a good look at the course. I came in in 35:something and Chris went out.

We had some stiff competition with the team of Andy Applegate and Daniel Corum putting 4 or 5 minutes per lap on us, it looked like we were going to be racing for whatever was left and after 4 laps, we were in a fairly close race for 2nd - 4th. We were in 4th and about 8 minutes out of 2nd and doing all that we could to make the time up. The teams that were going to see to it that we didn't do that were no slouches. At this level, everyone is fast and one mistake can cost you dearly. Like clockwork, Chris and I not only were turning consistently fast laps, we were within 30-40 seconds of each other's lap times all day. We made very few mistakes except we both were trying really hard to catch the guys ahead of us and that combined with the heat took it's toll. We slowed down a little by lap 10 and then maintained that pace for the rest of the race. By then, we were about 22 minutes from 2nd and anything could happen. It could rain (that would have been evil) there could be a mechanical or the other guys could slow with the dark coming. We kept as much pressure on them as we could.

Transitions: Easy as One...................

Two..................

Three................

I mentioned the lack of climbing earlier. Don't get the wrong idea, there was climbing there and what little bit there was really hurt later on in the race. My 32X17 gearing was a great choice though and I am happy I used it instead of something lighter. A lighter gear would have made the singletrack and freeway sections really suck. As Chris and I toured the 7 mile course, the laps kept ticking up. We, well everyone was turning laps really fast. By dark, we had 16 laps and that is something you don't see at a 12 hour race very much, hell I have been to 24 hour races that were won with less laps than that. The course was that fast.

I went out for my 9th (our 17th) lap at about 8:05. The cutoff was 9:00 so I had time to get back and get Chris out for one more giving us 18. It was fully dark now and I rode my ass off. I wanted to turn another 35 minute lap but the traffic wouldn't let me. I passed 12 people on my last lap and at the top of the steepest climb on the course, a girl tells me the race has been called due to a storm that was in the area. Shit! I thought. I eased up a little in the last 3/4 of a mile of the course and still made it back in time for Chris to go out but it didn't matter. We were done and we ended up 4th, roughly a half lap down from 2nd.

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.

Let's not forget the sponsors.

The start was fast and dusty. Some dude ate it just after this pic was taken. It looked painful.

This little rock garden had the potential to hurt bikes and bodies.

Chris on the climb to the finish.

Got Cowbell?

Nathan yelling "Go Daddy"

Am I asleep? Stoned? Maybe just tired and faking it.



Photo credits: Nancy Archer and Chris Baker

Need More Cowbell

The 2008 Cowbell Challenge is this weekend at Fisher Farms in Charlotte. Me and Chris Davis are going to be flying the Vassago flag in the Duo class where some of our competition includes Andy Applegate so it will be a stiff race for sure. I'm a never say never kind of guy and in the spirit of the underdog, nobody knows who will stand atop the podium come Saturday night. I do know endurance racing is a funny animal and anything can happen. Me and Chris are there to win regardless of who we have to kill.....um I mean beat.

At any rate, it will be interesting.

Hopefully the forecast for clear and temps in the 80's holds. last year it was hot as hell and at 4:00 it was around 100. I and a lot of others died from the heat. It was horrible.

Although team events are not anything new for me or Chris, they are kinda new for the Vassago team as we all have been mostly solo rats. We are starting to get enough depth in our talent pool and numbers on the team to be able to do some stuff like this. I do like solo stuff but there are some undeniable aspects to team racing that are a blast like being able to ride laps as fast as you can without worrying about the consquences of going to hard. In solo racing, you always have to meter your effort to make sure you have enough juice at the end.

I am looking forward to it.

Rocky Raccoon and the Decathalon

Some people have an ant, roach or mice problem. Some even have a rat problem. Where I work, we are infested with Raccoons. There's at least six of them that I have seen and they live upstairs generally above my head and I hear them from time to time scampering across the ceiling (kinda sounds like a mouse on steroids). I'm not much for killing things so I got a trap and so far have relocated two of them.

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:

1. Mowing and Triming
2. Painting
3. Cleaning
4. Packing up clutter and sorting through it
5. House and deck washing
6. Cutting and trimming shrubs
7. Landscaping
8. Cleaning
9. Cleaning
10. 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.

Back to a routine

The last few nights, I have slowly returned to a somewhat regular training routine in the midst of the world around me going to hell in a handbag. Maybe it's not THAT bad. Maybe it's just my attitude. At any rate, I rode at Warriors last night with Bob and Wes and one of Wes' teammates from Indiana. We had a great ride. It was brisk but nobody was killing themselves and it really felt good to get back to some familiar trails and just ride.

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.