Friends, food, views and happiness

Finished up a huge bloc of training with a killer ride down at the Hollow yesterday. Truly couldn't have asked for a better day. We met up at the hollow early and were treated to a killer spread for breakfast. After filling our tummies with all kinds of deliciousness we rolled out the door. My legs were zapped from my tt effort yesterday, but it wasn't really a big deal. It was actually quite cold out in the morning, but turned into an awesome day.

It was a great time chatting with friends, soaking up the sun and enjoying the day. The highlight of the day was our stop at the gas station. But I'll send you over to Brandon's blog for his writeup on that and a picture; You better update it quick!



Had a little misadventure where Mark, Brandon and I rolled off the front and missed a turn. We were just chugging along and chatting, about 5 miles later we decided to stop and wait as we hadn't seen anyone. Shot the crap and realized no one was coming so we headed back to where we last saw people. Of course they weren't there.Here we are in the middle of nowhere and no idea where to go, so we just pointed it towards Bath and buried ourselves till we got there. 10 miles later we picked the group back up downtown.



We pulled back into the hollow and were treated to another huge spread for dinner this time! Huge thanks to Wendy for hooking us all up with such good vittles!! :)



Here's some pics enjoy...

Naturally weather calls for 60's all week and this is a recovery week, wtf? Always works out that way!!

Rainy Day...

So I headed out for the giro today, was running a little bit behind and I wanted to ride there. No big deal, I had erin drive me to the other side of town. From there I would roll out and everything would be chill. Got to Park Ave with a few minutes to spare. They apparently were doing a demo event with Cannondale and Specialized. I milled around and gabbed with the reps a little.



Rolled out and headed out to the course. There were a few off the front, but otherwise everything was chill and relatively easy paced. An attack came in the usual spot over by Parish hill, I jumped with the group as usual and my wheel came out of the dropouts. So I pulled off to the side and fixed er up. Looked up and the group was stretched out single-file blowing people out the back left and right. Freakin yay, I gave chase for about 30 minutes picking up stragglers, but no dice. I wasn't going to regroup. At least it gave me a chance to throwdown and do some threshold work. As I hit 251 it started sprinkling so I headed home. The closer I got the harder it started to rain. I picked up the pace as I was getting pretty cold fast. Got home as it was really coming down and jumped in for a nice hot shower.



I made some changes on the site (again) not visible, but hopefully there should be no more problems for you people still stuck in the dark ages and using IE. I had to remove a javascript file that was causing problems, especially when you clicked around. Seriously though? Get Firefox! Also fixed the problem with the slideshow from the other day not working out.



Looking forward to tomorrow; should be a good one!

Epic Peaks Coaching Launched!

Epic Peaks Coaching is Official!!!



I'm super proud to announce that I can now offer coaching services! To those that are interested hop on over to EpicPeaks.com. Take a look see and let me know if you or anyone you know are interested. Feel free to email me if you are want to chat or have questions.



Also if you haven't noticed I re-did the site. Hope you guys dig it. If things are a little out of whack, please let me know

Vernal Equinox and a nasty climb

Happy First Day of Spring! Mark, Hanggi and I celebrated today with a ball buster of a ride. Mark and I picked up Hanggi on the way out of town and pointed our noses south to Naples. We fought a brutal headwind the entire ride south and east. With out legs already fatigued a little bit from that effort, we undertook a daunting task. One that no man has tried before, probably because we were far too smart to attempt. I had tried several years ago, but gave up after a brief effort that resulted in my defeat and me on my knees cursing the world. What was this task? Wolfganger climb, a brutal dirt road that rises 1500' right out of the valley of Middlesex. The road is pretty much straight up. If I were to guesstimate I'd say the average gradient is around 23%. For 35 minutes of climbing, my average cadence from my power files was less than 40rpm! The road was steep, nasty steep and being Spring, it was muddy. With the wet soil it made the effort twice as hard as you were sinking into the mud and also trying to keep your pedal stroke smooth. We ended up walking several sections. Let me just say that speedplay cleats are not made for mud. It took me a long time to get my pedals to engage again. After what seemed like eternity we hit a short flat section, only to turn the corner and realize we weren't even close to finished and the worse was just beginning. (Many curse words followed that corner).




As we finally crested the top we were exhausted, and relieved that it was over. But like any good dirt road climb, we had to go down. And down a loose, wet dirt road on skinny road wheels is best left to... us! Damn, we bombed that thing! Descending that road leads to an incredible view of the Naples valley. We were going to fast and I was having too much fun to pull out the camera. Diving in and out of the tire rutted corners, dodging potholes, sliding around on the mud and snow, all at 45 mph.

After a short break for some fuel up at the arrow mart, we headed home. Much to our enjoyment we had a nice little tailwind. It barely helped though, we were pretty crushed from the efforts of the climb earlier. We just buried our heads and plodded along. Once we got closer to home though, our legs started to show some signs of life and lead us to the promised land. We narrowly escaped the oncoming rain this time and arrived home totally wiped out

For those wondering if I was a good boy or not over the weekend; I was!!! I did a little xc skiing on saturday with lizzy at dryer rd; followed by some trainer time. Sunday was some trainer time again, but was cut short by a power outage that left me with now visual or even any fans. After an hour of that I threw in the towel


Digging Fire It Up from the album "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" by

Modest Mouse

Course Creator

I just came across this a few moments ago and it looks really cool. It's called Course Creator. Just sign up for an account and right away you can start mapping out distances, elevation, and if you have a garmin gps you can get waypoints for your ride. This looks real cool and I'll be playing around with it a bunch for sure.



Ol' man winter looks to possibly be coming back tonight and tomorrow ; Really sucks as all the snow right now is pretty much gone. It's been real cold overnight so I'm hoping to hop over to dryer rd and maybe get a mt. bike ride in this evening before the snow comes. As far as tomorrow goes, I'm probably going to have to suck it up and do a little ski time and trainer time. I hope by Sunday they can get the roads cleared back up and I can head out for the gvcc giro.



I'm sure a few people are caught up in this weekend's training dilemma, How do I train and still celebrate St. Patty's Day?? Well don't have an answer for that one. Check back Monday for a wrap-up and see how I rolled. Will I be good or bad??



Back to work....

Blame it on the Rain

So today as is usual for a wednesday, our usual group of slackers hit the road for a ride. Mark, Suzanne and I hit the road around 8 am (an hour late due to an alarm clock fiasco ;). Rode over to pick up Hanggi and Chris and then head South to Branchport to meet up with Casey. It was a pretty mellow and relatively flat route heading south, but we did have to fight a stiff headwind down.



We picked up Casey in Branchport then preceded to bury ourselves on 3 climbs in a row. I'm feeling pretty good on the climbs so far as I haven't done too many, but the super steep stuff (aka Yoder Hill) is killing me, or is it that everyone had compact gearing? At least I redeemed myself on Sid Vicious, I got dropped on the second kick, but reeled everyone in with a super effort.



After we wrapped up the climbs we headed north back to G-town. Our basic strategy was to get the ride in before the rain came as the temperatures were super awesome in the morning (50+). Pretty much as we got in our pace line and started moving the rain started coming down. Boy did it ever come down. It was absolutely pouring out and coming down in buckets. We were lucky though, and managed to have a decent tail wind. We pretty much just put our heads down and drilled it all the way back. We dropped Hanggi and Chris off and Mark, Casey and I slogged the last few miles together. Somehow miraculously we got green at every light and pulled into the driveway just in time. I think another 500 meters or so of rain and cold would've caused the 3 of us to collapse.



No photos today though due to the weather.



Listening to: Welcome To The Black Parade from the album "The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance

Sunday's Epic

This past sunday was a killer ride down around Keuka Lake with Brandon and Casey. Temps were a little cool as compared to the previous day during the GVCC Giro. We departed late morning for a nice cruise up and down every hill between Penn Yan and Hammondsport. Cruised up a few brutal climbs early, 364, Yoder, Sid Vicious, etc. My legs were still a little cooked from the day before and each one of us fought some demons that day. Lets just say that it was damn good to get back to Lloyds especially after fighting the brutal headwind the whole way home.



2 days later I can't lay down a good recap so you'll just have to look at the pictures instead.





For some odd reason you might have to click hide/show to the far right in order to see them???



Right now its 60 and sunny out while I'm sitting here at work, ahhhh! I have family plans afterwards so it looks like I'm going to have to pull off a night road ride and then tomorrow morning is the usual meet up with the gbc crew for the wednesday ride

First Hard Efforts of the Season Down

Today was my normal kick-off to the racing season with the start of the GVCC Giro's. As usual it brings everyone out for a day of racing, catching up with old friends, and good training efforts. And generally it means the end of the indoor season!!

We were greeted with excellent conditions for the day, and this brought out a good number of riders. As is usual we have a little roll-out to the course and then the racing kickstarts. A break went early and the pack let the 2 riders have a little bit of a leash but they were reeled in over by Parish hil.l Soon as they were caught the mandatory Shickluna attack was launched and that got the pack a little antsy. We suffered quite a bit along the backside of the course as everyone gave chase and there was a brutally strong wind. As we made our way off the larger loop we were greeted by the local sheriff, flashing lights and all. Apparently, a few people had been complaining about us taking up too much off the road. After a brief reprimand racing was restarted. Sitting around for a few minutes really took the life out of my legs and it took me a few minutes of suffering to get back up to speed. Just prior to rolling across the line for the 1 lap to go a break of 4 went up the road. I saw the break, saw it had the right combination and hesitated. I tried to bridge, but it was futile they were gone and I was left begging for scraps. The break stayed away to the end, but their games of cat and mouse almost go them caught at the line.



Overall I was pretty satisfied with my form. I've done basically zero training above threshold specifically, so it was a little bit of a shock to the system. Hopefully mixing in these next few weeks of good efforts with some long aerobic rides (see my previous post about tomorrow!) will be just what the doctor ordered for the upcoming season!

Listening to the prayer from the album "A Weekend in The City" by Bloc Party

Technorati Tags: GVCC, Racing, road cycling

Sundays planned ride...

Weather is changing! Tomorrow is the GVCC Giros and sunday will be a big day!

this is our planned route




click here for full size image

Car trumps bike...everytime

For the first time ever, I was hit by a car on my bike. Luckily nothing major, no bike problems, no injuries and nothing really to report other than a little soreness of my right knuckles.



This past Saturday, weather was decent (mid 30's and windy) and it was time to get out for a nice long ride. I headed out of town via my usual route of down Main St and then head South via 444. It has some nice gradual climbs that are perfect for getting warmed up on. I was in the left hand turning lane behind the 3rd vehicle. I made sure to sit far enough out that the driver could see me via her side mirror and rearview mirror. I could hardly be missed as I was wearing a bright yellow jacket. As the driver rounded the turn I stayed about 10 yards back in the same position, just off the right quarter panel of the minivan. I was accelerating standing up at an even pace with the vehicle. The driver slammed on her brakes and makes a quick right hand turn into the very first driveway on the right. Well as I'm on the right hand side of the road and had just finished accelerating, that puts me in a little bit of a bind! I had my hands on the hoods and was just staring at a big ol side of a vehicle in my path. I slid back on the seat, squeezed the brakes turned to the right a little bit, and BAM! smacked right into the rear quarter panel with my left hand. Luckily, I didn't even go down! No pavement action for me. I had shielded the front wheel perfectly and absorbed the impact with my right hand and a little bit of the right shoulder. I had vision of a tire crushing me and my bike, but never went down like that.



After some calm exchanges of words and apologies, the driver admitted she had seen me and it was her fault. No damage done to either party and we parted ways. I continued on my ride and managed to get some good mileage in for the day (~ a little over 4 hours or so) before I the wind took over and I had to take shelter inside.



After that I was a little more cautious than usual in giving vehicles space...



Saturday night was a blowout at Mark and Suzanne's. I had a short lived but good time...(note to self, don't eat so many damn brownies!). There was some good chatter about doing a double highlander, which amounts to about 200 miles and 22,000ft of climbing! We'll see how that one shakes out..



Sunday was recovery from the party, the crash and the end of a recovery week for myself.



Hopefully this week is the last of the deep freeze and can get out to the Giro's and some xtra time!