#1 reason to tie and solder your spokes

No spoke cards...

#2 is to have a commuter wheel that won't get out of wack riding on Providence area roads...

No racing. Despite really wanting to head up to Sunapee, I just did a little 3 hour suffer fest with team-mates Nathan and Aaron. I had a nice 30 minute warm up heading into the city. Then hooked up with the guys and we proceeded out of town to do a Tower Hill variation. I started coughing up all kinds of lung cookies on the first set of risers on Old River road when Nathan took off. Thinking that it was a good thing to be coughing this shit up here and not 3 hours to the north in a race. I was feeling pretty toasty. The mellow rollers I was able to drill it and hang on when they were drilling it, even able to put some space between me and them tipping down. Then we hit mansfield. I've always hated that hill, but love it. It is much steeper at the bottom but then relentlessly keeps going. I love it because after the top we head left and up W Wrentham a nice long 4-5% grade and I eat that hill up usually, even if I suck the mansfield one. But no, Aaron's route had us heading right and then left on nate wipple IIRC. The shittiest road in the whole area. No shoulder, sand and pretty much no road surface from the white to the yellow line coupled with a good amount of car traffic. That and no hill. But hey - it took us over to the base of Tower hill and I let those two kids fight it out till they were tasting puke. I plodded up, keeping the 24 and 27 clean. Which really meant it was just a muscular endurance climb. Then the fun began. Heading down W Wrentham. And well, I took a swig from the bottle, spotted them 30-40 yards and then "attacked." Real attacks come in races and in races there is usually at least one or two people in a group that can go down hill as fast as I can, that's the trouble with training with small guys. Anyway, I blew past them and just kept drilling it, spinning that 53-12 with all my might and kept it up until the restaurant there when I figured I had enough momentum to coast up to the light. Rinse repeat heading down Mansfield. Got my HR up higher going down than up. Legs started to feel better. Nathan started drilling it on River road. we gapped Aaron and I was dieing, but some how found something in my legs that let me stick on his wheel on the one hill heading back I usually get unhitched from. Then heading in before the school, before crossing over the highway, Nathan wound it up. full on 53-13 or so. And I decide, what the hell lets see how long I can hold a sprint and lets see if I can jump out from behind nathan and jump fast enough to keep aaron from coming with me. Jumped just as we got on the bridge, and held it almost to the school. This wasn't down hill but it was done from a solid lead out - not announced but it killed me. And hanging on to the next series of risers wasn't easy.

I got both on demand, when I wanted it, when i was ready for it longer max efforts and some max efforts when I really felt i was at my limit and kept going.

Biggest thing that kept hammering home in my head. Pre-race warm up. Too old to start a race cold. Even a longer road race, esp a short road race.

I'm noticing that it takes me a good while before everything opens up, and then once opened up all these reserves show up that weren't there before. This past cross season i finally started getting some regular and specific warm ups in on the trainer. And I haven't done that before any of the road races this year. And my warm up for KoB was pretty suspect.

So it was a great ride. not a race, but i was pushed beyond my comfort level both by my own doing and by others. Then I headed home. Rested for an hour or so, then headed in to help my brother move an old grand piano. Sumbitch is heavy. 4 big guys plus one not as big but with a truck that didn't have a cap. Down a flight of stairs. Had a couple "few that thing was heavy" beers and then hung out with my little bro before he had to head back to Phili. Kinda nuts driving up, moving a piano, then driving down in the same day. Sunday was mellow mellow mellow. Wicked tired from the week and the day before, pulled a thousand or so maple seedlings out of the front of the house, took the littlest to whole paycheck for some provisioning, and then got home in time to watch some Red Wing Hockey.

Bike to work day on friday was fun, they had some killer BBQ there. The place deserves a post alone - esp noted was their obvious and clearly marked vegan and vegetarian options, pretty cool for a smoked meat joint. Going to have to swing by and pick up some pulled pork on the way home some night for dinner. The guy remarked setting up that he was worried he had too much food. One of the organizers said "too much food? around cyclists? never happened before" and sure enough - the 4 piles of sandwiches were gone pretty quickly and the ribs were disappearing just as fast.

Well - I managed to crash the browser by trying to right click a pop-up address window into a new window and that was at lunch. Well I should re-phrase that. I started eating lunch - got interupted to help trouble shoot something critical and then my 1pm showed up, and just left. I literally ate for 5 minutes of my 60 minute lunch... i was hungry until a few minutes ago. So it crashed - i forgot about it till now and well... I dunno if I made sense or not. As usual probably not, at least not to anyone but myself. I know it is bad when my wife asks me to explain just what the hell I meant with the ramblings of the day. But then I'm guessing she skims anything bike/training/ride related so that leaves a small % as confusing where it really means a large % is confusing. Except on the rare days I get wicked lucid. Which seem to get further and further apart.

I like Dave's take on the 3 feet rule. Should be common sense. Shouldn't be any need for it. Gonna be hard to enforce unless everyone gets like Jeff's Bike Blog and has video backup. Hard to deny that something is needed.

Heck NH has the 3' rule. I wonder if that changed anything for the NH riders up there.

I'm still having a hard time imaging jellysidedown wearing queen size panty hose. but not really, doesn't seem much of a 'stretch'. Seriousness aside - that much flip flopping and I'll leave the compression socks to the airline pilots and other airplane passengers to combat DVT. Certainly you don't need them in competition... do you? I wonder if bruce still has the wheelbarrow link kicking around for that beam guy.

Great news. Yehuda Moon is coming back. June 17th.

A nice recap of the Providence BTWD over here. But man - it was pretty lame and tame compared to some. Heck, if I'm reading joel's blog right their Mayor showed up in kit and stuff. not wearing baggy exercise shorts a windbreaker and an unfastened helmet. But hey, at least ours showed up, right?

And in the afternoon i ran across the guy who "passed me up the hill" a while back wearing khakis... colin picked it out and i'm not feeling like i have enough time to search (ie lazy)... well, he remembered... we had a good laugh about it, although I sort of forgot in my embarrassment to mention "next time, just say something as you go past"...

two good videos there posted by Molly. Freaking funny waiting for the horn to honk watching the guys take off from behind the car...

tomorrow's the local "smack down" ride. No i did not come up with the name - someone else did. Tuesday night worlds was taken. And our small band of guys is making the ride hard, maybe we'll eventually get a few more folks to join in the fun some time. The weather is looking pretty damn perfect for the ride tomorrow.

Oh and weather - speaking of. I've started checking using the NOAA.gov graph. Wicked geeky and cool.

Well it says it is 51°F out there right now. that is not warm, but not cold. about the same as the ride in...

Time for a mellow spin the day out of my legs.
heddwch
G