New Projects

Exciting things are swirling around in my head and brewing up in the background out of sight from all of you. First, my family & I had a great time this past weekend at the Fat & Skinny Tire Fest in Lake Winona, IN. I had a fun race, took home a prize, but was really, really bummed that I couldn’t GoPro my ride because of a user error (I didn’t check to make sure the memory card was cleared/emptied properly). It would have been a great one to capture. Hopefully a more complete recap of the weekend will be forthcoming later this week, complete with pictures and short videos.

The second item that I’m excited about is an idea I had last week to create a different content twist on the standard product review. I’ve been recording a couple of reviews and uploading them to my YouTube Channel. There’s only 4 up there now, but I will be adding more over the coming weeks. I feel like I have now used enough products and use them hard enough to provide a fairly knowledgeable review. Here’s a couple that I’ve uploaded:

 

 

I’m still messing with the lighting and may add some background as I get more comfortable with my basement setting.

 

The last project that I have decided to start working on will be developing a new, related blog. Over the winter I had a lot of fun posting and writing quick updates about my training, but felt that it was overtaking this blog which I intended to be a more broad based ‘go-get-outside’ blog. The reality is that most of what I do outside is on a bike, but I would still like to keep this open for other outdoor things I do with the family and friends. After I discontinued posting my training updates, I felt a slight void. I think there are a lot of athletes like me who develop their own training programs because of either the cost of hiring a professional trainer or out of personal interest. I’m creating a new blog to essentially diary my ongoing, unprofessional training regimen. I hope to have this new blog, which I’m calling Accelerate Labs, up and running in the next couple of weeks with a first couple of posts to kick it off.

Exciting stuff, exciting times….

 

 

 

A Michigan Mountain Biking Test

Don’t Stick Your Foot In There While Moving.

This is what happens when you try to knock snow off your foot by taping it on your front fork while riding. You can very easily miss the fork and stick it in the front wheel, catapulting you up over your handle bars and onto the ground in, oh I don’t know, less than a second? I’m amazed that all I did was bend a spoke. The wheel even stayed true (until I started riding it that way). It’s a Velocity Blunt. I’ve had issues with the SL’s on my rear wheel, but this one has been bullet proof, and now that I’m back to the base model Blunt on the rear again, I’ve had no issues there, either.

Anyway, I mentioned in an earlier post that I was working on a couple of projects that I’m excited about. The first is a lo-fi mountain bike stage challenge that incorporates most of the West Michigan mountain biking trails. What’s lo-fi you say? Well, all of the participants will be timed by using Strava and completing the Strava segments that have already been set up at each of the trails. Each rider will have 72 hours to complete all 8 trails. And to eliminate the need for offering all of the various race categories, I’ve developed a handicapping system to help level the playing field. I like to think of it as the BCS of Michigan Mountain Biking. But, because nothing like this has been developed before (that I’m aware of), I’m having to do it by hand. This has been very tedious.

Essentially, what I’m doing is going through about 10-15 races from last year, including the highly attended Barry-Roubaix, Yankee Springs Time Trial, Ore-to-Shore, and Iceman, and creating a ‘par’ completion time by averaging the finish times of the fastest 5% of the riders at each race. This is pretty simple for point-to-point and single-lap races because everyone rides the exact same course (I consider the different distance options at the BR and O2S as separate races). Many of the MMBA’s CPS races, however, require a little finagling because depending on your race class, you complete a different number of laps than the Elite riders (typically the make-up of the fastest 5%). To solve this, I went through everyone’s lap times, and when necessary, added 5% to the previous lap time to come up with the following lap time as many times as it took to equalize the number of laps for everyone. Finally I took the difference between my participant’s adjusted time (AT) at each race, subtracted the par time (PT), divided it by the AT and multiplied it by 90%. The 90% was to create a slight disadvantage for completing fewer laps. This works well for riders who may ride at the top of their class, but could very well compete in the class above them (possibly like me last year).

What you end up with, is a percentage of deviation from PT that you can average using all of the races that a rider completed and apply to each rider’s actual times for each Strava segment in the challenge. Add them all up from each of the trails and compare them to everyone else’s to see who was the fastest that weekend.

So part two of my project, which is actually where I had started and ran into the idea above, is to create a Michigan Mountain Biker Ranking. I had the notion to come up with something about a year ago, but didn’t really start mapping out how that might work until late last fall after Iceman. Some of the factors that need to be considered in putting a list like this together is not only normalizing the number of laps at each race like I did for my Strava Challenge, but also come up with some sort of trail rating in order to appropriately differentiate the race difficulty, or maybe better described as the trail type. The theory there is that some riders are better at certain types of races than others. I’m more of an endurance rider and do better at longer races with mid-to-more total elevation gain.

I’m still working out what calculations I might use to come up with an overall rider ranking, but in the meantime I ended up creating what I believe to be a fair trail rating equation that uses three factors: elevation gain per mile; trail length; and technical difficulty. Of those three factors, technical difficulty will be the most subjective, while elevation gain and trail length have been some of the more difficult data to find. For that I have gone back to Strava. Because that data is based on GPS information which is somewhat subject to each device’s reception there is some discrepancy and inaccuracy (or lack of precision), if I use the same type of data for all of the courses it should still provide a good comparison. This is what I have come up with so far:

Trail / Race Course (Per lap)	Elev. Gain per Mile	Climb Rating	Tech Rating	Length	Length Rating	Overall Course Rating 3
Addison Oaks	0.0	10.0		6.0	8.3	6.1
Al Quaal	0.0	10.0		12.2	4.1	4.7
Al Sabo	0.0	10.0		5.9	8.5	6.2
Allegan SGA	18.8	8.9	9	16.0	3.1	7.0
Anderson Park	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Arcadia Dunes	104.3	3.7	3	11.5	4.3	3.7
Aspen Park	0.0	10.0		6.0	8.3	6.1
Bald Mountain	0.0	10.0		12.0	4.2	4.7
Barry Roubaix 24	66.7	6.0	8	24.0	2.1	5.4
Barry Roubaix 36	61.1	6.3	8	36.0	1.4	5.2
Barry Roubaix 62	45.2	7.3	8	62.0	0.8	5.4
Bass River	18.8	8.9	2	8.0	6.3	5.7
Bennett Park	0.0	10.0		8.0	6.3	5.4
Betsie River Pathway	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Big M	100.0	4.0	4	40.0	1.3	3.1
Black Mountain	0.0	10.0		30.0	1.7	3.9
Bloomer	0.0	10.0		8.0	6.3	5.4
Boyne Challenge	133.9	2.0	2	9.3	5.4	3.1
Boyne Mountain	125.0	2.5	2	16.0	3.1	2.5
Brighton	0.0	10.0		14.0	3.6	4.5
Bruno’s Run	0.0	10.0		9.0	5.6	5.2
Burchfield	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Cadillac Pathway	0.0	10.0		13.0	3.8	4.6
Cannon Township MTB Trail	0.0	10.0		1.2	41.7	17.2
Canonsburg Ski Area	97.4	4.2	4	7.7	6.5	4.9
Canonsburg State Game Area	60.0	6.4	5	7.5	6.7	6.0
Cheboygan	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Chippewa Hills Pathway	0.0	10.0		6.6	7.6	5.9
Clear Lake	0.0	10.0		4.0	12.5	7.5
Clinton River Park Trail	0.0	10.0		4.5	11.1	7.0
Copper Harbor	0.0	10.0		25.0	2.0	4.0
Deerfield	0.0	10.0		7.5	6.7	5.6
Eagle Run Trail	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Edwards Creek	0.0	10.0		7.5	6.7	5.6
Ehlco	0.0	10.0		26.9	1.9	4.0
Ella Sharp	0.0	10.0		11.0	4.5	4.8
Fort Custer Stampede	0.0	10.0	4	11.6	4.3	6.1
Fort Custer Trail	0.0	10.0	4	20.0	2.5	5.5
Frankenmuth Trails	0.0	10.0		2.0	25.0	11.7
Gladwin Trail	0.0	10.0		6.0	8.3	6.1
Grand Island	0.0	10.0		23.0	2.2	4.1
Grand River	0.0	10.0		4.0	12.5	7.5
Greenville Shearer Rd	0.0	10.0		5.2	9.6	6.5
Hanson Hills	0.0	10.0		21.0	2.4	4.1
Harlow Lake	0.0	10.0		18.0	2.8	4.3
Hartwick Pines	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Heritage Park	0.0	10.0		8.0	6.3	5.4
Hewens Creek	0.0	10.0		4.5	11.1	7.0
Hickory Glen	0.0	10.0		6.5	7.7	5.9
High Country Pathway	0.0	10.0		80.0	0.6	3.5
Highland	167.0	0.0		14.7	3.4	1.1
Holdridge	106.9	3.6		14.0	3.6	2.4
Hungerford Lake	0.0	10.0		13.0	3.8	4.6
Iceman Cometh	82.4	5.1	5	30.0	1.7	3.9
Ionia	0.0	10.0		7.5	6.7	5.6
Island Lake	52.0	6.9		13.0	3.8	3.6
Jailhouse Trail	0.0	10.0		5.5	9.1	6.4
Kensington to Proud Lk Connector	0.0	10.0		2.5	20.0	10.0
Lake Ann Pathway	0.0	10.0		5.8	8.6	6.2
Lakelands Trail	0.0	10.0		13.0	3.8	4.6
Lakeshore Park	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Lightning Bend City Park	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Love Creek	0.0	10.0		4.2	11.9	7.3
Luton Park	66.7	6.0	3	9.0	5.6	4.9
MacKenzie Trail	0.0	10.0		12.0	4.2	4.7
Madeline Bertrand	0.0	10.0		2.2	22.7	10.9
Marquette South Trails	0.0	10.0		20.0	2.5	4.2
Maybury	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Merrell Trail – Red Direction	101.7	3.9	3	5.9	8.5	5.1
Merrell Trail – Yellow Direction	101.7	3.9	4	5.9	8.5	5.5
Michigan Tech Trails	0.0	10.0		18.0	2.8	4.3
Mid Michigan Community College	0.0	10.0		10.1	5.0	5.0
Midland City Forest	0.0	10.0		13.0	3.8	4.6
Midland-Mackinac Trail	0.0	10.0		11.4	4.4	4.8
Milford Trail	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Morton-Taylor Trails	0.0	10.0		8.0	6.3	5.4
Munson	0.0	10.0		5.5	9.1	6.4
Negwegon	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
North Country Trail	73.7	5.6		25.7	1.9	2.5
North Higgins Lake	0.0	10.0		6.5	7.7	5.9
Norway Ridge Pathway	0.0	10.0		7.0	7.1	5.7
Ogemaw Hills Pathway	0.0	10.0		13.6	3.7	4.6
Olson Park	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Ore to Shore	31.4	8.1	5	49.5	1.0	4.7
Orion Oaks	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Ortonville	0.0	10.0		3.5	14.3	8.1
Owassippe	124.9	2.5		11.0	4.5	2.4
Pando Ski Area	100.0	4.0	5	6.0	8.3	5.8
Pigeon Creek	0.0	10.0	9	10.0	5.0	8.0
Pine Haven	0.0	10.0		9.0	5.6	5.2
Pomeroy/Henry Lake	0.0	10.0		50.0	1.0	3.7
Pontiac Lake	110.0	3.4		11.0	4.5	2.6
Porcupine Mountains	0.0	10.0		25.0	2.0	4.0
Potowatomi	88.2	4.7		17.1	2.9	2.5
Proud Lake	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Refuge Bike Park	0.0	10.0		3.8	13.2	7.7
Rifle River	0.0	10.0		15.0	3.3	4.4
Riley Trails	41.7	7.5	6	6.0	8.3	7.3
River Bends	0.0	10.0		6.9	7.2	5.7
Robinette’s	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Rolling Hills Park	0.0	10.0		3.0	16.7	8.9
Rouge Park	0.0	10.0		3.0	16.7	8.9
Ruby Campground	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Seven Lakes	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Sharon Mills	0.0	10.0		3.8	13.2	7.7
Shingle Mill Pathway	0.0	10.0		14.0	3.6	4.5
Sleeper	0.0	10.0		4.0	12.5	7.5
Sleepy Hollow	0.0	10.0		10.0	5.0	5.0
Stony Creek	64.0	6.2		14.0	3.6	3.2
Swedetown	0.0	10.0		33.0	1.5	3.8
T.K. Lawless	0.0	10.0		9.0	5.6	5.2
Tisdale Triangle Pathway	0.0	10.0		10.1	5.0	5.0
Upper Macatawa Trail	100.0	4.0	3	2.0	25.0	10.7
Valley Spur Bike Trail	0.0	10.0		26.0	1.9	4.0
VASA Singletrack	0.0	10.0		13.0	3.8	4.6
Wakely Lake	0.0	10.0		16.5	3.0	4.3
Waterloo	0.0	10.0		5.0	10.0	6.7
Whiskey Creek	0.0	10.0		22.0	2.3	4.1
Wilderness SP	0.0	10.0		16.0	3.1	4.4
Wildwood Hills	0.0	10.0		9.5	5.3	5.1
Yankee Springs	90.0	4.6	4	13.6	3.7	4.1
Yankee Springs Time Trial	109.1	3.5	5	22.0	2.3	3.6
Averages	83.3

So that’s what I had been working on before I got crazy busy, and I should be able to get back to it again over the next couple of months to finish it up. In the meantime, I’m working on ramping up my training for my first race, which is now a month away. I’m really looking forward to racing again and I’ll be sure to keep my feet out of my wheels from now on

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Create a Cycling Training Plan in 6 Straightforward Steps

Reblogged from Velo Quips:

Step 1: Define Your Goals

You can't have a sustainable training plan without goals. The number of goals depends on the individual; if you're an avid racer (>20 races/year), I'd recommend setting 4-5 race-specific goals, but if you're only planning on doing a dozen (or less), I'd recommend making only 2-3. For example, my goals for the 2013 season are:

Read more… 1,641 more words

I'm sure you've noticed by now that I've changed my Wordpress template. Sometimes change is just necessary to 'keep it fresh' (for me mostly, but also for you). Changes are coming slowly as time allows me to figure out lay-out and feature options (I really wish Pinterest would get their API complete so I could add that element to my blog). I continue to get caught up in the non-biking areas of my life. I haven't been able to get a good post in, but here's a post on developing a training plan. Talk to you soon

Proud Moments

I’m proud to announce that on this snowy, wintery, work-from-home Thursday, I now have my first 1,000 view YouTube video. My One Second Epic collage from Iceman Cometh last November has achieved a relatively rare milestone amongst the millions and millions of videos that have been uploaded to YouTube so far. I’ve been watching the numbers for weeks as the initial response in November and December propelled the video up past the 800 mark. As I would have suspected, the initial numbers were high as race participants searched for recaps and POV footage to re-live the great weekend and begin to tide them over until next season, and then began to tapper off. I don’t have grand expectations that this will accumulate another 1,000 views any time soon, but it’s cool to have one under my belt.

I’m going to repost the video here, but I’m also going to post a very interesting video of Kevin Allocca from YouTube talking about what makes videos go viral which I found very interesting. It’s only about 7 minutes and totally intriguing.

 

Fits and Starts

I’m going to get real honest here. I’ve said this before, but training is 75% mental for me with the majority of that being spent on the decision to actually start. I think its easy to look at pro athletes and think that training just comes natural to them; that its fun. Maybe it is, but I want to believe that they go through the same mental anguish that I do before every training session.

The thought process starts like this: set the plan for the week and get pumped up about how hard I’m going to work and how much faster its going to make me. I do really enjoy creating the plan. I can begin to see how the specific drills and structure is going to allow me to be faster next spring. I visualize how much time I’ll take off my laps at various races. I’m winning first place already. Day one of my week, though, I start the mental back-and-forth of what time I should start that day’s work. Do I get up early and do it before work? Do I get after it right after the kids are in bed? Do I relax after the kids go to bed and get it in just before bed? Then once I’ve determined when I’m going to start and arrive at my pre-determined start time, I start thinking “Do I need to do this tonight? What if I woke up tomorrow morning and got it in? My legs are still a bit fatigued and I’m not sure that’s good for them to push it. What if I skipped today’s plan and fit it in on Wednesday?” And by the time I push through the mental road blocks I’m eather 15-30 minutes behind schedule and need to stay up later to fit in the workout or I dilly-dallied enough to run out of time all-together. I’d say I skip a work-out for this reason about 10% of the time.

It’s a frustrating personal challenge to overcome. I know how good I feel after the workout, and I know how disappointed in myself I feel when I skip a planned workout. Still, I fight this same battle every time. Every successful workout will make the battle easier, but I don’t think I’ll ever eliminate of this battle, either.

With that in mind, here’s my training plan for the next week. I did successfully fit my entire plan in last week, including a really fun trail ride on Friday (I’ll be posting the video as soon as it’s done uploading to YouTube). I posted my sprint workout on YouTube earlier this week. It’s my intent to start posting all of my workouts. Google Hangouts makes it easy to broadcast your Hangout to a public livestream and then automatically records and uploads your session to YouTube for replay. It’s sweeeeeet.

TRAINING SCHEDULE: WEEK OF DECEMBER 23, 2012
	Sprints – High Cadence:	Total	Completed ?
10	10 minute warm up – 30%
	15 second on – 100%
20	15 second rest – 20%    -   20 total reps (10 minutes)
25	5 minute rest – 40%
	15 second on – 100%
35	15 second rest – 20%    -   20 total reps (10 minutes)
40	5 minute rest – 40%
	15 second on – 100%
50	15 second rest – 20%    -   20 total reps (10 minutes)
60	10 minute cool down – 40%	60	Monday
	Strength Training – Upper Body
	Sprints – Low Cadence:
10	10 minute warm up – 30%
	40 seconds on – 90%
20	20 seconds off – 40%    10 total reps (10 minutes)
25	5 minute rest – 40%
	40 seconds on – 90%
35	20 seconds off – 40%    10 total reps (10 minutes)
40	5 minute rest – 40%
	40 seconds on – 90%
50	20 seconds off – 40%    10 total reps (10 minutes)
60	10 minute cool down	60	Saturday
	Strength Training – Lower Body
	Sustain:
10	10 minute warm up – 30%
30	20 minute sustain – 80%
35	5 minute rest – 30%
55	20 minute sustain – 80%
60	5 minute rest – 30%
80	20 minute sustain – 80%
90	10 minute cool down – 30%	90	Thursday
	Strength Training – Lower Body
	Strength Training – Upper Body
	Outdoor Fun Ride:
	Whatever for however long	75	Sunday
	Outdoor Lakeshore or Trail Ride:
	Wherever; just at 75-80% effort for 90 minutes	90	Wednesday
	Strength Trainin – Upper Body
	TOTAL	6.3

Race Day

I’m heading out to my first mountain bike race of the season, the Yankee Springs Time Trial (Barry-Roubaix is now considered a cycle-cross race). Over the past 3 weeks I’ve put in some good hours on the bike with a taper week this week. We’ll see how my plan works. My hamstrings are a bit tight for some reason, so I’m going to have to carefully and completely warm them up before the race to work them loose. Otherwise, I’m feeling good. I slept well last night and most importantly I’ve avoided the family cold going around our house…..so far.
The weather for today looks great. Sunny skies will provide optimal visibility in the trail. The temperature is currently in the mid 40′s, but will be low-to-mid 50′s by my 12 o’clock start time. Considering that, I’m planning on wearing the team shorts and my long-sleeve jersey. This temp also means I’m going to get away with only having to carry one water bottle (and maybe only half of that).
I will be the very first rider in the sport category, so the only traffic I’ll see will be from behind. I’m just hoping that my brother-in-law, Evan, doesn’t catch me (he starts at 12:01). We’re going to get there by about 9:30 to catch the start of the Elite/Expert race and possibly get out to some inner sections of the trail to grab some pictures of other Cross Country Cycle teammates.
All-in-all, I’m ready and excited for a great day. I’ll update later tonight with results and post-race thoughts.

Wednesday Night Ride

I walked away with a few scrapes and bruises but a big smile last night. The Wednesday night group was strong last night in both quantity and quality. Starting out at the Yankee Springs Deep Lake trail head, the group rode for a little over two and a half hours including a full traditional loop during the first hour, and then an hour and a half of undisclosed two-track and single-track with a ton of hills. I was on the group for about 2 of those hours. We had a group of about 12, which is always cool to see as you wind through the woods single file.
The Wednesday night group ride is the first real riding group that I joined. It’s a loose group of Johnson Controls Inc. employees who started riding together years ago at various places in the Grand Rapids area. The group has slowly evolved and grown over the years and now includes about 35-40 people that follow the weekly announcement of where we’re riding, with a consistent core of 5-10 that show up every week. Ability varies, as does the trail selection, though typically we ride Yankee Springs in the spring and fall, Cannonsburg State Game Area (some call it Egypt Valley), Cannonsburg Ski Area, and Luton Park through the summer. When I say AND to Luton, there’s a group that has ridden the tri-fecta (CSGA, CSA, and LP back-to-back-to-back) on many of the summer night rides.
Over the last two years several members of the group have started riding very competitively and have joined the Cross Country Cycle Mountain Bike Team. The last time I was on a competitive team was collegiate intramural softball in Montana. We won the championship under my outstanding team management. I’ve played on other softball teams since as well, but I had to throw out the championship reference. Anyway, joining the team this year brought some real excitement and pride to my riding. It’s pretty impressive to see a large group of guys wearing matching spandex shorts and form fitting jerseys cruising through the back country on their bikes….no really…it’s not weird….honestly.
The next race we’re all planning on is the Yankee Springs Time Trial (YSTT) on April 22. The YSTT is the first mountain bike event of the Championship Points Series race schedule, and I think the first mountain bike race of the season in Michigan. It’s the most widely attended mountain bike race besides the Iceman Commeth Challenge and the Ore-to-Shore Mountain Bike Epic. Nearly 450 people have already registered compared to last year’s 530 riders, of which over 100 registered the day of the event. This year’s event will be capped for the first time at 700 riders.
The Cross Country Cycle team will have riders competing in nearly all of the categories. Because of this, our group rides on Wednesday nights can turn from casual no-drop to “I’m going to whoop you up that hill!…and then around these bends….and then down this decent…and…hey, where is everyone?” in the blink of an eye. This has the effect of really challenging guys like me who probably ride the line between ‘sport’ and ‘expert’ (really competitive in sport / maybe not last in expert). Last night’s ride ended up being a bit less of a no-drop ride and more of a no-messin’ ride (my term for a no messing around ride). And that’s how the scrapes and bruises happened.
It’s fun to keep up with the fast group out on the trail. But in mountain biking, going faster is more than just increasing your physical fitness. On both occasions last night my spills were the result of me steering poorly (as opposed to someone else steering poorly and me running into them, I guess). Some of it may have been endurance related as I find that if I climb like mad on an uphill, I’ve sucked all the blood and oxygen out of my upper body which is necessary to drive the bike on the way back down. But the other part is simply trying to avoid stuff that is coming up on you quicker because of your increased speed.
My first little spill involved me choosing a high-ground line too late to avoid a 1 ½ inch sapling separating the sandy line from the line I wanted. I ended up finding out why you wear a helmet….it’s to collect sand and leaves when you do summersaults with your bike without leaving the ground. My neck is a bit stiff tonight, but otherwise that was merely comical. We were only about a ¼ mile into the trail when this happened, so it had nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with handling skills not matching the speed we were carrying at that point.
The second spill was half way through our first loop and I had been pushing really hard to keep up with our Elite and Expert riders through the first set of climbs. After cresting the top of a long climb, I knew I was winded, but kept pushing because overall I felt good. Coming down the back side into the winding descent, my front wheel veered off the trail into some loose dirt and over the handle bars I went again. This time my left lower leg took the brunt of the fall and got scraped pretty good. No significant injuries again, though, so I tried to hop up and get back on my bike before I lost my spot in line. However, as soon as I stood up I realized that maybe, for my own safety, I better just let a couple of the guys go by and cool down in the rear of the pack. That ended up being a good decision because I would have most definitely worn out to early for the rest of the ride’s pace.
The rest of the ride was uneventful for me but our group overall took a beating out there. There were several other riders who came back banged up, scraped up, and cut up from the trail. I don’t recall any other rides being that brutal, but then again it’s the beginning of the season and for the most part our group is starting out faster than we did last year (which for most everyone is faster than the year before that as well).
Ending the night, as we usually do, at Uccello’s in Wayland, we were treated to some great stories about the night’s ride as well as group ride legends that become tradition to retell at all gatherings. Several of the group members ride with point of view camcorders so we get to check out some of the night’s ride via laptop as well. Ahhhh the age of technology. In case you forgot what that ride looked like, you can experience it again within minutes of completion without any of the effort. That’s actually really fun. Our server got a kick out of it anyway.

The Liebster Award

I’m honored to have received The Liebster Award from fellow blogger and endurance sports enthusiast, Fit Recovery. Thank you very much for the recognition. Here’s his full post:

The Liebster Award.

The honor comes with a charge to pass it on; or pay it forward as I like to say. So, in that light, I would like to share with you 5 bloggers who I think do a superb job of sharing their insights, excitement, trials, and tribulations about their experiences outdoors:

1. kolo t.c. – When I began blogging with more frequency earlier this year, my intent was to offer some coverage of Michigan cycling events, namely mountain bike events, because its NEVER covered in the local news. I think bringing attention to biking is good on so many levels, but really appreciate its unique offering of being an individual sport that has room for people of all skill and fitness levels. When I found kolo t.c.’s blog, however, I realized that I couldn’t compete with his fantastic coverage of cycling events. My only hope now is to fill in the gaps where he doesn’t show up

2. Loving Traverse City – I love Northern Michigan. I visit whenever I can and so I follow this blog to help organize visits around special events or to find cool activities off the beaten path.

3. teamuranga – As I look to improve my mountain biking ability, I enjoy reading about this couple’s aspirations and achievements in becoming pro mountain bike riders. They’re inspirational, and fun to read.

4. All Seasons Cyclist – Another year-round rider no matter what the weather. This fellow Midwesterner provides great product reviews for anything you need to enjoy biking, regardless of weather. I would expect that this blog has more than 200 followers, but I like it, its my award to hand out, and that’s the way I roll.

5. Barn Door Cycling – Great stories about fun cycling adventures and exploration. Another fellow Midwesterner shares a mix of interviews, product reviews, ride previews, and pictures of scenic views. I like his perspective and writing style.

 

Tornado Touches Down in Harrisburg

Reblogged from Barn Door Cycling:

This morning around 5 AM I was woke up by sirens, but It didn't look like there was that much going on out the window so I went back to bed.  I got back up at 5:30 for my morning walk, the internet and phone were out.   I knew something was up because cars were everywhere and sirens were all around. 

Read more… 156 more words

This is one of the blogs I follow. I first learned of the tornadoes through this blog and was immediately shocked. These pictures are a simple reminder of the immense and destructive power of nature.

2011 in Review: World Cup Dalby Forest

Reblogged from kolo t.c.:

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After a weekend of skinny tires, Monday requires some great mountain biking action from Dalby Forest. One of the earlier races of the year, and one of the best courses, Dalby served as an opening platform for Specialized's Jaroslav Kulhavy to make history.

Read more… 188 more words

A great video from my new sponsor, Specialized (at least until I wake up). The fact that we're 2 days from March, I have a new bike in hand, and videos of new MTB races are pumping me up and producing a wicked itch for this year's riding. Happy Monday!