Amar-Ricaaaa

So I backed out of the Mohican 100, hopefully I'll get my entry fee or at least part of it refunded. I'm looking to save the legs for Plattekill and the Hardcore 24.

Tuesday night was the final wrap-up of the Farmall Series. I finished 3rd overall, and 2nd in my age category for the series. Congrats to Corey Knowles on taking the series win! I felt really great racing and the power numbers were pretty good for the event. While short course racing isn't my forte anymore, I actually felt great and worked the course to the best I could. I had it handed to me fair and square.

Memorial day weekend was a great time to get loads of training in. Saturday was a little short due to Lake's birthday party, but I snuck out on the road and got some time in the sun.

Sunday was an awesome day. Jim Hogan joined me down at Bristol to kick off a nice killer ride. We climbed up Stid hill and then dropped the tower drop. We both managed to make the final chute (straight drop!) and headed over to OCP. At the Ontario County Park, we ripped up the new trails. With some time those trails are going to be great and can't wait till a race is hosted on them. We crushed the Orange trail descent and headed over to Cutler. There's still a few trees down there, but hopefully they'll be gone come race day for the Hardcore.

Jim ventured on with me into Naples, where I made the mistake of not picking up any water or taking any of his. As he headed back to the car and I pointed towards Parish, he offered me water, but I was sure the store in Italy Valley would be open, right? Climbing Parish was fun, but not nearly as fun as dropping the jump-off/hanglider trail into the valley.

From there I climbed up Burke and that was a good suffer-fest, and started to get really low on water. I was rationing it out as much as I could. I blazed it down past the outback inn and up to Brink/Basset, where I managed to run completely out of water. Still having to charge on through Hi-tor and then down the DEC, I finally made it into Naples 40 minutes after running out of water and nearly 2 hours after rationing. Needless to say, I was a bit dehydrated. I grab some refreshments and got an immediate "ice-cream headache" from the gatorade it was so cold.

After fueling up and re-hydrating I turned and climbed Griesa-to Gannett and back to OCP. Descended off that and headed towards the backside of Bristol. I really love that climb and I was flying up it and putting out awesome power considering I was nearly 7.5 hours into my ride at this point. I wrapped up the ride with a killer descent down the face of Bristol. 8 hours/135k, somewhere around 10-11,000'ft of climbing. 8 major climbs......

Monday was a tempo day on the roadbike, plan was to ride around Seneca Lake. After 60k of fighting a massive headwind I decided to turn around, only for the wind to pull a 180, 20k later and give me another headwind the whole way home, ugh!

No mohican= time for another epic this weekend.

I leave you this pic that sums up our society: Amar-Ricaaaa

Weekly Wrap-up

I'd like to drive some traffic over to the 29er Crew website so you can read all about my riding and training for the most part over there. For the list of my entries go here ,I'll most likely double up my posts for a while. I'll keep adding little tidbits here on this site and maybe start blogging about other things besides just bikes and racing.

Back to the main event...

This has been a tough week. 18.5 hours and a TSS score of 964! Whoa. Needless to say, monday, I'm sitting here wiped out. I pretty much want to do nothing but sleep and eat food. I'm famished. I spent the middle days of the week doing some hill work and intervals and managed to get out for some big time riding this weekend.

Saturday, I had to get the car fixed in Victor again. I headed south into Naples, for some good hill climbing. Hit up West Gannett, Griesa, Egypt and the climb out of Bristol. It was a good day, 5+ hours in the saddle and I felt great.

the paragon takes a rest at the top of W. Gannett

As far as sunday goes; the post from the 29er crew and write-up is available here , But I'll throw in some pics for your viewing pleasure.

Rolling along the lakefront

Quiet Sunshine day



Suzanne enjoys the lakeshore



Stayin warm in the early am (20 degrees)



Mark attacks the rollers



The Champ tells it like it is



Climbing up Winding Stairs



Still climbing



Mark Flats





Sunday afternoon traffic

Warm(er) and Windy...It's all relative

Work has been incredibly boring these past few days. When you are a software tester; waiting around for the developer to deliver you an application can take some time. I've filled my days by continually hitting refresh on various blog websites and trying not to drool on my keyboard while I sleep.

I do ask for work, believe me I'd rather be doing something. Yesterday managed to be a nice day, so I decided to leave a little bit early and head out for a ride in the wind and warmer temps.

On monday, I had swung into the Geneva Bicycle Center and picked up a new Giro Atmos (full flash site). So yesterday was a nice day to put it to the test.



Testing out the atmos

It's quite the helmet, very light and breathable. I could hardly tell it was on me noggin at all. A nice secondary aspect is my sunglasses fight quite nice when you put them up in the helmet.

The ride itself was great. Super windy day though, gusts in the 30-40 mph range, and constant around 20-25mph. Somehow I managed to ride mostly cross/headwind most of the ride and stay out of it directly. I felt really good and hit up a few hills for extra bike practice.



no need for shoe covers

It's starting to get to the point where I'm feeling good and strong and almost ready to race (less than a month!). I pushed it hard for the 3 hours I was out on the roads and came home feeling strong. It helped that I had a massive tailwind the whole way home. Even though I am running road gearing (12-27) on the paragon, I was running out of gear at 44x12 with the wind whipping so hard. I barely had to give it gas to keep flying forward.

It's looking nice out there again, better get back to work so I can squeeze in another one (I actually have work today!)

Currently playing in iTunes: Stars in Concert 10-22-2007 by NPR

Back to the dirt; Finally

Finally hit the dirt this past weekend. Been quite a while. Yesterday, headed over to MPH. Casey, Val, Mark, Suzanne, Jim, c-dog and lizzy along with myself put in a few miles before the trails thawed. Since the paragon has been pulling double duties, a quick wheel swap was required in the am and I was out the door.

It was nice to be on the dirt and the sugary snow that was left in a few hidden areas. I think the last time I was off-road was at the hollow a few weeks ago! Been that long, damn. Alas, my mind hadn't forgotten how to handle the bike, but some subtle nuances were missing. I wasn't out of my element, but definitely wasn't on top of my A-game. I felt really good climbing the hills and making the transitions, that you get in mt. biking but miss out on on the road. It was nice to be in the woods and get the stillness and quietness of nature. It wasn't very quiet though when you hit the crunchy snow; with a gaggle of riders, you could barely hear yourself think it was so ungodly loud.

The day ended a little bit early for myself and lizzy as she had taken off early for her usual exit. She returned, a little bloody, and tired. She hobbled on as long as she could, but I ended up having to walk her out of the woods as she could barely move. She hasn't opened her eyes up since she's been home.

Hopefully all the snow will be gone soon everywhere and the trails will open up.

Most likely not gonna happen, but one can wish right? Oh well, there's always the California singletrack to look forward to in a few weeks right?

Friday and Saturday where the usual road excursions. Friday was almost cut short, but a quick pit stop in the GBC helped bring some bloodflow back to my fingers, and I managed to make it home for the nice 40 minute hot shower to continue the thawing process. Saturday was nice sun-shinny 4 hour day and dealing with the wind.



Feeling really good on the bike right now, but taking today off to do some cleaning and bike maintenance and get some stuff up on ebay.

I'll edit this draft and post some pictures; I've got some, but have been slacking as the cable is at work and camera is always at home.....

Spinning in the Rain

I'm Spinning in the rain, just spinning in the rain...Well, the weather here in Upstate NY is at it's usual finest. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the snow is gone. But, ma nature isn't being extremely kind.

Yesterday it was in the mid 40's and wet, gusty and rainy. I had to head out of town the past 2 days for work related business, so I decided to loosen the legs up after work this evening. Having come off a nice epic ride this past weekend I definitely needed to get the blood flowing.

I hemmed and hawed at whether or not to go, why not just skip it? It's just a short ride to loosen up the legs. Well it took one glance at my bracelet, and my mantra for the current season:

Harden the f@ck up!

That was enough to light a fire and keep me warm for the entire ride.

Hopefully the weather cooperates and can get out the next few days. I've refused to ride the trainer for this season and regardless, get all my miles in on the road/trails (and I've been pretty good at it too!).

Considering my days left till race season was just cut in half as I'm heading out to Sea Otter next month, every day get's extremely important!

How does one know they are chomping at the bit? When the phone calls for Easter dinner come in, and you are running in your head how you can fit in a 6+ hour ride and still make it home in time for the food to be warm!

Woohoo Happy Spring!!!

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!

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