Frozen Private Parts

A Motley crew showed up for yesterday's ride. We had guys on commuter bikes, mountain bikes with road tires, cyclo-cross bikes, road bikes and one at TT bike. I was a little worried about Mike Casper on the TT bike, but he actually did very well and handled the icy sections well.

Randy got there early and put in an hours worth of riding and had to time trial back to arrive at our scheduled 5:45 depart time. However, due to Harters crappy directions and Sperl being late as usual we didn't get going until around 6:00pm.

I finally got the my Kona Jake the Snake frame all built up as a commuter (yes I was the guy on a commuter bike). I decided to go with just a single chain ring up front. Not to be 'trendy' or anything, but just because I did not have a front derailleur that would fit. I put an old down tube shimano shift lever on to handle the shifting in the rear. Since the Snake doesn't have shifting bosses I had to zip tie and old adapter that had some ancient bosses. The indexing on the shifter didn't work so I will have to use the old school 'friction' mode. It works, but is not pretty. I couldn't find an old set of cranks so I ended up using the carbon profiles that I got from Dave. Wheel set is from Gerard's old Bridgestone RB1. They are old, but still have plenty of miles left in them. Saddle, seat post, steam and bars are all from Ritchey Logic. A set of fenders rounded her off.

8 of us left the trail head, but 'someone' was going way to fast and we dropped a few along the way. Most of the trail was in fine shape, but there were a few icy spots that we had to navigate. At about an hour into the ride Randy and Mark turned around to head home. Harter, Mike Casper and myself went all the way up to Smoken' Davey Trail head. I dressed very well for the temps, but along the way my 'private parts' got a little cold. Must have been the old set of shorts that I had on - wind just passed on in. By the time we got out to the turn around I was in severe pain. Harter told me to "Put it in Cider" which I thought as rather strange. I finally figured out what they were talking about. I was wishing I had one of these during the ride - see picture....

If anyone is interested in a fun 40 mile night ride we are planning to hit the Smithville Lake paved trails tonight. Start location is on the South end of the trail. Here is the map. At the end of 5 corners road where the tear drop is...

Ride time: 5:45pm.
Ride Distance: 40 miles
Ride Hotline: 8162131620

Training is Over - Time to Race.

Time sure does fly when you are having fun.... That is, if you call suffering like a fat pig fun. The first phase of my training plan is over. It's time to hit some early season races and test the old form. Unfortunately, I already know the results as my training has not gone as well as I had hoped for. I'm still 10 lbs overweight and my form basically sucks. My long distance rides haven't been anywhere close to where they need to be for a 100 mile race. I tried my best to get out when the weather was o.k., and I even got to know my basement really well by spending countless hours on the old trainer.

My original plan was to attend the Froze Toes Road Race with some of my teammates (sorry Shad), but decided to put in one more week of training and not embarrass myself. Next week the Spring Fling Criterium series starts, the Perry Road Races and Heartland's Truman's Big Love. I really don't think the Big Love is going to happen due to the muddy conditions at Landahl so I'll plan to check out the Spring Flings or Roger's Perry Road Races.

Our Drug Problem.

Roger sent this to me and I thought it was so true.....

A Walk In The Woods

For President's Day we all had the day off and decided to take a long hike up on the Smithville Lake MTB/Hiking trails.

A sign was posted alerting riders/hikers to stay off the trail if they are wet. Apparently deer can not read because there were hundreds of deer tracks all along the trail.

Along the way Carolynn, Christopher and I cleared hundreds of fallen branches.

Everyone be sure to thank Christopher for picking up all these nasty thorny branches. I wanted to leave them but he would not let me :-)

Is Someone Trying to Tell Me Something?

I have been putting in some decent miles, both running and cycling.

Tuesday, a long run after work. I decided to test my new Nike trail running shoes . Actually got these as a warranty item from Nike. My Free's fell apart last year and while they didn't give me a free pair I did receive a $75.00 coupon. My short 45 min run turned into a 2 hour march thanks to some very icy conditions on the trail behind my house. I needed my screwed shoes for conditions like these....

Wednesday night I was going to take it easy as I had a 5 hour ride planned for Thursday, but Randy posted a Smithville Lake paved trail ride so I decided to go as the pace was going to be easy. Again, trouble with icy conditions. The path had dozens of short snow/icy patches that gave both of us a hard time. Randy took a nice little spill just past Sail Boat Cove. I had just about gone down in a frozen rut myself but I finally got going again and then I noticed lights spinning around ahead. As I got closer, I saw Randy flat on his butt having hit a long icy patch...

I took off from work on Valentines day and headed off on a planned 5 hour ride. A cold front was to come in so I thought that I would try for the elusive all tail wind ride. I had a good South wind to my back as I headed towards Platte City. My plan did not work out as I had to fight the same South wind on the return trip. At the 3 hour mark I was in Ferrelview, out of food and very hungry. I stopped at the convenience store and a Snickers bar was calling my name. It was good, but did not ''handle my hunger" as advertised so I headed home and cut my ride short. Oh yea, I got my North wind about 3 miles from home. Missed an all tail wind ride by about 1 hour....

Friday both Carolynn and Christopher were off so we headed out to Landahl for a quick MTB ride while the trails were still frozen. I decided to run instead of ride to get in a better workout. The frozen trails lasted about 45 minutes then started to thaw quickly so we headed back towards the Argo trail head. Still got in about a 1 1/2 hour run this time on good trails. Shoes worked great which is more than I can say for my van. That darn thing broke down again. This time the alternator went out. I thought we could make it home on the battery alone, but then the transmission started to stop shifting as it needed some juice. As we were all loading up in the Mel's Towing truck, I thought to myself "I think someone is trying to tell me something".