Slowly coming along...

The Supercaliber is almost ready to rock, she's about 90% finished right now.Snipping cables and getting the ergomo up and running and swapping the saddle out are pretty much all thats left.Hopefully get that done this afternoon and have her ready for tomorrows ride.A little bitty weekend in store for her, a few back to back dirt road centuries should have her broken in pretty well. I think that will do the trick?



Pretty much running her stock, except swapped the wheels for some race x lites, the ergomo and a sweet set of polished chrome race face cranks. Those things are rocking and so pretty. Stay tuned for a full set of pics and the addition of her to my rides page...



Will be down in P-burgh to put all the miles in this weekend and will try to get everything up and posted bu Sunday night.

MPH and the arrival of the Supercaliber

Gotta love MPH.; Mark, Suzanne, Casey and hell even the Fry guy himself made an appearance for the first time in a while. We hit the trails for a nice little night ride. Conditions were pretty much perfect, a little slick in muddy in a few spots from the thunderstorm the other night, but all in all it was great. We hammered it out for about 2 hours or so. The legs were actually feeling really good after Sunday's effort. I was ripping the paragon around the trails while Casey was riding it's twin brother the Rig. I think we mighta converted someone to 29ers ;)



Looking  forward to ripping it up down in Naples this afternoon.



On an awesome note the Supercaliber has finally arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope to get her built up Friday or Saturday and bust her cherry this weekend.Not sure If I'll be able to run the ergomo on her just yet as I need a good ISIS crank so might run the crank of the paragon so I can ebay the stock. But damn, I can't wait to ride that bad boy.



Well, I gotta get some work done so I can head out early and ride. Look for a nice long post after todays ride with some pics and recap

Paris Ancaster

Well, the first effort of the season is down and out of the way.  Thank god, it was only a little over 2 hours.  That was painful for sure.  I was pretty happy with my performance in the first half of the race, but I cracked about 50-55 minutes in.  Just haven't been training for that type of power output.  My back started aching really bad and I began to not even be able to hold a single wheel at any point.  I under-estimated the water I would need and suffered pretty bad on that point also.  It was quite a bit warmer than I thought it was going to be so that didn't help.



All in all it was good to get out there and lay it down, even if it wasnt the result I was looking for.  There are always plenty of other events out there and second chances so we will see at the next one........

Time to check the form

You know, I just had this whole post typed up and then lost it, wtf!?!

Paris Ancaster is coming up this weekend. A nice 60k with a mix of road and off-road. I'll get to test the form out in the first real race of the season. We'll see how that goes, as the first one usually hurts the most. Plus it will give me a good gauge on where I sit so far in my training. I'm still a long ways from top form, but in reality Hardcore 24 is only 8 weeks away. That seems alot sooner than I thought when I type it out.

The paragon will be handling the duties for this race. Set her up with a nice pair of skinnies and let her rip. Handled the course quite nicely last year, and besides have yet to receive the supercaliber.

Brandon, Casey and I will be embarking for this adventure so I'm sure we will have a good road trip and some funny stories.I'll be sure to bring the new camera along to capture everything the best that I can...

At least the weather is looking fairly decent for this coming weekend....

Michaux Video

Here you go world premier of my home movie!

Lessons learned

Sometimes life just hits you hard. Sometimes you have to take it, sometimes you get to fight back. After a pretty crappy week full of mishaps, grams in the hospital and other crap; I'm not gonna go down without a fight!



I was away for the week and got to hit up the trails at Michaux State Forest as I was down in Gettysburg for work. Weather was great, trails were super dry. The shop in Gettysburg hooked me up with a trail map.



Headed up the mountain and into the trail. Man was I having a blast, rolling around and hitting the dirt. Then the rocks came, damn it was super tech. Loads of fun and I was on my game. Never dabbed and cleaned every section. Hell yeah. I got a new digital camera so here are some pics!



If I can figure it out I took some cool video clips and might piece em together

Weather is freaky, but that's not all

So, I had to bail on last night ride at MPH, somebody grabbed the wrong shifter without looking (me) and it was 7 speed, doh! I was pressing for time and the bike was in pieces, and didn't feel like recabling the paragon to go back to the old shifters.



Oh well, looks like I'll have to put some time in the wind and rain today.



Was down at the Geneva Bicycle Center the other day and I ordered myself up an ergomo pro for the Supercaliber, hopefully that will arrive pretty soon.  Gonna also attach a sweet set of the Bontrager Race XXX Lite Carbon cranks to her. Probably going to go with the Rock Shox Reba, but the possibility of a Fox fork is exciting. Because I'm dropping the dough on the ergomo, I'm going to run my older dual control xtr set-up and hopefully upgrade to the new stuff as the season goes on. I can't wait to rock that bad boy.



Weather looks to be dropping off for the next few days, acting all freaky. But for some reason today, there are some really freakish stories in the news

• WTF? Keith Richards snorted his dad?
• Lady on horse arrested for DUI
• Saved by a pile of poo?
• 102 yr old man takes out 25 yr mortgage?

Ok, my pc is asking me to reboot...

I am still here :)

Yah, I know.Holler at me all you can. I can't hear you. I've been swamped with lots of stuff going on in my personal life.



On a positive note, Epic Peaks Coaching is doing well!



Also spent alot of time on the mountain bike lately. Hit Dryer Rd up wednesday afternoon, then the hollow on saturday and sunday.



I'm riding the dirt again tonight at the MPH and I swear I will get some pics up and a decent writeup!!

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!

Ski Time

Finally got some time to update the ol blog. Had quite a busy weekend. Schmoozing with the Fisher Rep, xc skiing saturday and sunday and dinner with Erin's parents Sunday night.



Super psyched to be on board with Gary Fisher again for next season. Had a hell of a time hanging out with the Fisher Rep Friday night. I think Erin did too as she got a little bit into the shots!Found out I'm gonna be rocking a 29er again; this time it'll be a dualie. Fisher Supercaliber with a sweet set of the Bontrager Race X Lite TLR 29. I can't wait to throw the legs over this bad boy!! It's gonna tear sh*t up at the endurance races this coming season. I'm still piloting the paragon, but having thoughts of possibly transforming it into a singlespeed...





Get a good look at er fellas, cause most likely you'll be watching her ride away from you!





Headed down to Hi Tor with the Hollow Crew for some xc skiing saturday morning. I've been thru there a bunch to snag the DEC descent, but never really tooled around. After spending some time there and exploring Saturday under Dave's guidance it's got a ton to offer. The trail book is starting to get quite thick at this point! I think the area is going to come in awesome for some hill training and wet conditions riding on the fireroads.



Conditions were pretty much perfect for a nice, easy going kick and glide. Sun was out and we got off the trails just as they were starting to get sticky.



Overlooking Canandaigua Lake from the South end





So, what button do I push on the camera again?





Your's truly striking the pose





Val Fuels up for the assualt on the downhill





Dave and the pups glide away thru the woods





Dave descends into the gauntlet





The Gauntlet



Sunday was some more skiing; hit the woods behind the house for some time. I chickened out on the ride down in the Hollow as it was a little chilly so early in the morning (10 degrees). Come to find out conditions improved quite a bit throughout the day and overheating was more of a factor than freezing you toes off. Serves me right in the long run. Guess I'll just have to make up for it :)

Only Temporary

Our brief respite from ol' man winter was quite short. A few inches of snow falling overnight has me prepping the skis for the weekend rather than the bikes. Our "heat-wave" brought temps that were in the low 40's on Tuesday and upper 30's with sunshine on Wednesday.



Tuesday I put the tires to the asphalt for the first time since early January, when we had an actual heat wave. It was a good feeling to see the ground move past me on each pedal stroke. The air flowing created by actual movement. Quite invigorating. I plotted my course down thru South Bristol and back; pushing a good hard tempo pace. 2 hours passed and as I was making my way home contemplating putting some more time in, a few drizzles helped ease me into the warmth of being back home. My choice was the right one as it turned into a steady rain.



Wednesday was a good group ride. Casey, Matt, Mark and I met up in Bloomfield. Our intentions were to ride the new GVCC course. We started out heading on the correct route, but made an early turn off in the wrong spot. No big deal, as we all knew where we were and decided to head down and around Bristol Mt.





Churning along the ridge on our way to Mosher Hill







We hit the backside of Mosher hill for our first true climb of the day. Brutal for being one of the first climbs of the season. After struggling up and over the top and around to rt 64 we, confronted a decent headwind heading north. We set to work and got into our usual pacelining session. One great thing about riding so often together is that we work flawless. No gapping on pulls, no accelerations, just precision and execution of the task at hand. I lucked out and managed to be on Hanggi's wheel, which equates to having a mac truck in front of me the whole time. We stopped at the convenience store in South Bristol for some calorie re-supplies.





Casey puts the burn on as we pass Bristol mt.







Slackers! Don't you guys have real jobs!



After refueling we headed back north and onto the GVCC course proper to got back to our recon mission. The course itself is going to be a beast compared to the old Perinton course. It's quite rolling with some steep climbs and sections that are easily going to cause some splits in the groups.



Right now I'm 50/50 if I really want to do anything on the road at all this season. I've raced the GVCC Giro's and the Spring Classic for a few years and they work well to bring the legs up to speed. I'm refocusing completely on the endurance aspect for this season, but we will see what happens. Maybe, I'll throw some road tires on the Paragon and run that during the Giros. I'm sure that will give me a warm welcome from all the pure roadies!



This weekend is psycho-cross take 2. Hopefully the weather sticks and I can get a decent write-up and some picks for you....