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stupid autozone ad

this ad made me kind of annoyed when I first saw it, especially since it was being aired during the Tour De France, so now I'm using it in a research paper since the underlying assumption of the ad is that if you can drive a car there is no reason to ride a bike

CX you bitch

Did the second cx race of my life, first time on my own bike. It hurt and I sucked. Part of that is because I'm not in the shape that I was once in and secondly, I just rode like a scared girl on some of the sections. I didn't wreck any and all that means is that I wasn't pushing it to the limit. I wasn't walking along the razor's edge. Still, it was cool to get out and do a race, since I only did one mtb race over the summer, mainly because I lost my job and had no spare monies. Because I got beat by enough sport class mountain bikers I feel like it is okay for me to go ahead and move back down to sport class next season :) then we'll see how the first race goes and make a judgment call from there. Racing expert class is not fun when you lose contact with the the tail end of the group in the first 15 minutes and start getting passed by the lead sport class riders a few minutes later. I dunno, if I keep playing golf as much as I have been instead of riding my bike I might have to move down to beginner's class. It was good seeing my bike friends I hadn't seen in so long, Rusty was totally a jerk though so it wasn't good to see him. You know he went out there thinking he was gonna get a podium finish but sucked like Rob Halford stuck in a room with 4 glory holes. I'm really just making fun of him because he called me a "tool" in public.

Here are some pictures

I've been riding my bike about once a week

this is about all I got I thought I should post this before Greg Shark-o-dian does.

CX practice

It's coming to Frankfort. OH YEAH!!! Fred and I will be laying out a course tomorrow at East Frankfort park and we'll organize some practices for Tuesday nights (not official yet). The park is supposed to be awesome with some climbing, sand, mulch, and some good run-ups. I haven't seen it yet but Woodson says it's a little like Harbin Park. Ya'll come out and join us.

Maybe so

Worst Summer for Mountain Biking Ever!

hills

this one hill that is 10 minutes from my house, it's a beast, of sorts. Only about .75 miles long but somehow takes me over 3 minutes to get up. When I'm at the tippity top I can begin coasting (no pedaling what so ever) and get up to 45 mph coming down that thing

i'll be darned

On my road ride in Frankfort today I happened across a cycler's cafe water bottle on the side of the road, probably leftover from the MS150. Anyway, score, it'll be a great bottle once I scratch off cycler's cafe from it.

and no, I didn't drink the gatorade that was still in it, although I wanted to. Worst part about riding out here is finding a place to refill bottles, no stores that I've seen on my route, and the two churches I've checked don't seem to have outside spickets. Bummer.

2 or 3 things

1.) Friday I had a good short road ride, bout 1 1/2 hours. I had a really good experience with motorist who was following me on one of the winding hilltop roads. I waved him around at a stop sign and he pulled up beside me and started talking about how he wishes he were still in shape to do what I was doing. When I thanked him for not being a jerk about being stuck behind me on the road he said, "Oh, I'm in no hurry, I didn't care if you let me around or not." Even though he was obviously coming home from work. For some reason that made me happy. Seemed most people were waving to me, rather than flipping me off.

2.) Saturday I went for a longer ride, rode out to my old church camp at Cedarmore, that brought back a lot of good memories (so many new girls to try to make-out with). One problem though was that mapmyride told me to take a right on one road that I was 80% sure I need to make a left onto. I saw a curious amount of cyclists down the road to my right though and thought maybe I would go see what was going on, plus I needed to find a school, store, or church to fill my water bottles. While sitting at the stop sign debating what to do (follow mmr or trust my instinct) a truck pulled up next to me with 2 shirtless dudes in it. Before I turned one said, "he man, do you like animals?" I turned and looked at him and he had a snake wrapped around his right-hand. It wasn't a pet snake, it was something he had obviously just caught, my guess is a regular garden-snake variety. I told him I wasn't that into animals and probably had a petrified look on my face cause his buddy was laughing his ass off. I was afraid he was going to through it at me, whether it was poisonous or not, I don't want a snake thrown at me. Too bad Big Country wasn't there to drop some knowledge on them. Especially when the guy started trying to tell me that it was a cotton-mouth, which I knew for a fact it wasn't, partly because it would have eaten him up.
After they drove away, laughing, I decided to go see what all the helmet mirrors wered doing down the road. Come to find out I was only a couple hundred yards from a MS150 rest stop. Sweet, so I pulled in, got some free water and a cookie, I didn't take a piece of pizza cause I didn't want to be greedy. I even got to meet JC, aka tan-man, who seemed much more normal than I expected. So it was all good, except the MS150 route used a lot of my training route roads so I think I made a lot of the riders second-guess whether they were going the right way or not when they would encounter me riding the opposite direction, or turning when the sign told me not to.
2 miles from home I was coasting down a hill trying to rest my chode a little bit, out of the saddle and about 8 miles beyond the point of cramps threatening a coup, my left hamstring locked-up hard and wouldn't stop. I stopped on the middle of the downhill, on the side of the road and couldn't get it to stop, saw some ms150er's walking up the hill, and decided I needed to pedal it out, which worked after I clicked into a gear that required a little effort. I think the mistake I made was that I was dehydrated before I began the ride so I couldn't get caught up while sweating on the bike. I'll try not to make that mistake again, I was afraid I was gonna get stuck on the side of the road, only a few up-hill miles from home.

map my ride

I haven't used map my ride much except for the other day to figure out a route from my house. Here is the newsest version click here for you that are familiar with it, does this route looks like it has a fair amount of climbing? Am I reading it right that there is over 1100 feet of ascent and around that for descent? I don't know if that is a lot or not but compared it to one of my routes, that I thought had a lot of climbing in it in Lexington, which said it was somewhere around 700ft of ascent

getting settled

first Frankfort Road ride with Troy Hearn and a few others this morning at 7 a.m. whoah! Sucked getting out of the house that early but it was a good 40 miler, little chilly at the start but perfect weather by the time we were finishing at 10. Tommorrow I'm hitting up capitol view for as long as I can turn the pedals over. Then back to the house to work the rota-tiller and make us a garden.

Next road ride I may try a solo ride from the house, I don't like driving somewhere to do a road ride. Here is the ride I mapped out for the ocassion click me

oh, and I almost forgot, Asheville this weekend for a sport history conference. I'm definitely taking a bike and guess it will be the road bike cause I hear I can climb for 3 hours and coast back down for 40 minutes. Sounds fun. Or should I take my mtb?

made it to frankfort

I officially live in Frankfort now. I'm kind of excited about the potential riding there, place is way more hilly than the roads in Fayette county. I'm gonna do my first road ride tomorrow morning with Troy Hern and some others. I went by his shop today and introduced myself and so on so I could get hooked up with some area rides. We talked about slomow for a minute and he said, "do you keep up with anthony?" and I said "yeah, definitely." He had a surprised look on his face and said something like, man, you must be a beast. then I realized what he had just asked me. I thought he was asking me if I kept in touch with anthony, not whether I can hold his wheel in the woods. Anyway, that was kind of funny.

I'm excited about our new place. Huge yard with nothing but a big ole hay field and some houses in the far distance is out our back yard. We had a bit of a bonfire last night after getting all the stuff moved in. I also have an awesome 2 car garage for bike and car work. if you want to see a streetview image of the little house you can cut and past this: 1612 Devils Hollow Road Frankfort KY into the search here and if you're familiar with street view you'll know you can rotate around the image and move up and down the street to get an idea of what the place is like. I can't wait to begin riding my mtb on a regular basis now, especially since the awesome tune-up from Clarksville Cyclery, the scalpel is feeling like a whole new bike.

a snippit from Greer's myspace blog

here is part of his description of the race

By the time I got out of this section some 40 minutes later, I was just thinking about how I was never coming back into these woods. I got to one muddy slope and my bike was so heavy that I couldn't drag it up. Some guy helped me push it up and then I helped him get his to the top. It was rediculous. My shoes got so full of mud that the velcro wouldn't hold. My right shoe kept coming off. I was so glad to see the field section and the start of Lucy's Loop. Just as I entered the field, my chain jammed behind my cassette. I couldn't get the damn wheel off because it was jammed with black mud. There was a pond next to the field so I waded off into it and cleaned off my wheels. I finally got the chain out and got rolling for the first time in almost an hour. I passed a ton of people as I rode the first half of Lucy's Loop.

The final climb kicked my ass. It took me 50 minutes to do the last mile. Both shoes were falling off and my bike weighed about 60 lbs. I was bonking. I was planning on one hour lap times, so I took no food and only one and a half bottles of Gatorade. I sat down for a minute and scraped the mud off my bike. That may have gotten it under 40 lbs. Then I threw it on my back and started running. My shoes fell off so I put them on my handlebars and just ran in my socks to the top. I passed a guy that had run over a fire ant nest and they were all over his bike. It didn't look like fun. I tried to ride the final field section, but the grass clogged up my wheels again. I was riding my guts out to turn my granny ring and third gear on the back. I crossed the line in just over 3 hours and 10 minutes for 10 miles. I think I ran about 6 miles of the 10, which is the farthest I've ever run in my life.


you can read the whole report and see a bunch of gruesome photos here

Too all those who raced DSG this past weekend

I'm sorry, conditions looked horrendous. I'm sure you probably have to buy some new parts for your bike now. This spring has been crazy wet for us.

got this picture from http://duckmansworld.blogspot.com/2009/05/dirt-sweat-and-gears-2009.html

I'm bored

One Track Lover? curious?

nevermind

nevermind the new set-up, we'll I guess it'd be free since I have the stuff already, but I just spent $180 on a full-on tune-up and some gloves. The bike did need some serious work--like having the rear link replaced (not sure why I those little needle- bearings seemed gross but I don't know why those couldn't be popped out and replaced. Anyway, now the bike is ready to go but I've got a cold. No racing for me this weekend. Is there anything between derby weekend and brown co? Not counting Warsaw.

I'm thinking of going to the Garth Prosser set-up

no, not dreads. But I have this spare 12-25 road cassette that is brand-new and was thinking of putting it on the mtb and getting rid of the big ring.

Benefits- will be weight savings and cost, road cassettes are lighter and cheaper than mtn., removing the big ring instead of granny = more weight shavings, and I'll be able to remove some chain.

drawbacks- I may spin out of gears every once and a while but can't think of too many courses around here when the 32x12 will be too small, except on long smooth downhills which I can't think of too many around here, and I guess I may have to shift between rings on the front more often. As is right now I can leave it in the middle ring for the entire race at most courses

thoughts?

today

Sold my motorcycle :( and went for a little bike ride at Frankfort, nat henton let me borrow his scalpel :) while he rode a single speed that kept dropping its chain :P My bike is at clarksville cyclery get a full-on tune up, apparently they had to order a linkage piece or something for the rear shock, I didn't really understand what brian was talking about but I'm confident it's being taken care of. 3 more weeks and I can start riding for real, but right now I've got about 60 pages worth of term papers to write 26 different books so I won't be riding too much till the first week of may :( I'd like to get some serious work down and show up for the norKY race next weekend. That means I need to stop updating my blog and get back to writing an essay. Holla.

Death Machine

Rusty's little Santa Cruz may be all black and "menacing", but lets face it, it's about as big of a threat to the general population as a member of Stryper. And like most threats to the general well being, my Cannondale looks unassuming, but it is now officially a death rider.

I have hit a squirrel once, but he survived. I have run over road kill. I have wanted to die and/or wanted to kill some people while riding, but yesterday was the first time I killed.

Truckin along US 42 about 25 mph, a bird flew right into my spokes (steel, bladed spokes 1 - robin 0). The little bugger almost took my down, amazing what a few ounces of unexpected force applied to the outside of a wheel can do, but instead, his lifeless body now lays along Brownsboro road as a testament to all other wildlife as to what happens when you tangle with me.

I'm headed out now to take out a bunny. Happy Easter.

Tues night worlds and thurs afternoon tempo

At tnw my pedal was feeling really loose, I figured I needed a new cleat for my speedplays but I still thought I should check to make sure the pedal wasn't coming off the spindle or something, it seemed okay so I continued on and then suddenly my chain dropped to little ring and I couldn't get it back in to big.

Anyone know what problem I was suffering from yet?

After this I figured I needed to either head home, or get off and really check to see what was going on, although I didn't know the two problems were connected until 30 yards later when my left crank arm came off and dangled from my foot as I unclipped the right and pulled over to to take the crank arm off my shoe. Luckily the bolt was still in so it was all good.

Yesterday and last time I did a hilly tempo ride (trying to get up the hills with low cadence/high gear seated) it has been my calves that have crapped out on me before the ride is over, not my quads. And actually the calves start to hold me back cause they threaten to cramp about 1h 30m in. What's up with that. I mean yeah I was dehydrated before the ride but so what.

I'll be damned

I'll be damned if I didn't win an award for outstanding graduate essay at the conference this weekend. It paid almost as much as winning a mountain bike race. I can't figure out which takes more time and energy for me though.

With gray hair comes Boringness

I get to be a real graduate student on Saturday and present a paper at the Bluegrass Symposium. I wrote it 2 semesters ago about African Americans and the sport of cycling. Too bad I no longer like the paper, but this will be good practice for me to explain my arguments to a small room with a few dorks in it and then have a professor spend a few minutes telling me why my argument and paper are retarded. N'Awesome.

here is the schedule

cyclists get tickets in Louisville

My friend Paul saw some road biker getting a ticket in Louisville on St. Paddy's day on Bardstown road. Apparently the cop asked for some i.d. and told him he has to obey traffic laws just like everyone else. I think that is okay, now if they would just start convicting those who hit cyclists, run them off the road, throw shit at them, threaten them, etc.

why not sex it up a bit

I guess some of the dudes have their fair share of "sexy" photos, like Bonnen and Chippolini. I just visited Willow Koeber's page for the first time and she has quite a few scandalous photos on her site. I think it's a little odd but I suppose she has to do something to remind herself and others she is a woman.








her website is http://www.willowkoerber.com/




ooohhhhh! I just killed your boner with Boonen except Rusty's

nice weekend

Yeah it was pretty and the trails were probably dry today but did I ride my bike? No way. I needed to take some pictures of myself with my car instead.





I sold my mongoose cx frame on ebay for 49.95 and some dummy paid 93.00 for a right/rear 9 speed shimano 105 shifter, one that I bought for 20.00 a few months ago. Crazy people. I have a nashbar cx frame now, it fits better, guess I should take a picture or two of it and post it. I had forgotten how crappy aluminum frames feel when you have 100 psi in the tires.

Stupid Louisville

Spent the night in Louisville Saturday night. Woke up as early as I could Sunday morning to try to go ride some frozen trails at cherokee. I was a bit worried though since the sun was out and in full force, even if it was only 24 degrees. Once I got there I thought it might be okay and rode up the hill toward hogan's on the new section of trail, which was solid, but once I got to the top it was messy. So I quickly got off the trail and back to the road, I checked out a couple other spots and they were all muddy so I started riding back to my friend's house. Saw Bo King, who was also riding his mtb on the road. Then I came up on some dude on an old schwinn full-sus, that was covered in mud. I caught up with him by the bottom of dog hill. And he was all like, "I thought the trails would be frozen, I guess I stayed on em a little longer than I should have" then he proceeded to refuse to let me pass him going up dog hill. I let him win, I hope he feels better about himself. It might have been a certain squirrel chaser that races sometimes but I couldn't tell through all the clothes and mud. Either way, at least I can continue to tell myself that there are fewer retards on bikes in lexington than louisville.

Nothing like a hard effort

Nothing like a hard ride to make you realize your saddle needs to be adjusted. It wasn't a long ride but I did an Lactic threshold test yesterday, just cause I hadn't checked it in so long. So it was 30 minutes of seated pushing pretty hard made my right knee ache a little. After the test was over I pulled over and sat on a guardrail to remove a shim from beneath the cleat on my right leg. I keep having this problem about the dull ache when I push real hard so I think my seatpost slips a little cause I've adjusted it quite a few times and it feels better immediately after but then a ride or two later its back to the same issue. I don't know if it has a divet in it or something where it slides back to each time. Suppose, I should just get a new post.

Anyway, the LT test just gave me even less faith in using heart-rate than I already had. The result was that my LT is exactly the same as it was when I was "really" training. I did hurt to peg it for a while though, I don't think I have done an effort like that since I was racing sport class and trying to win races. I think there is something to be said for pushing yourself through the rough spots were you're saying to yourself "this is retarded, why am I doing this?" So LT stands at 180bpm. At least I don't have to reset the zones on my hr monitor. Someone buy me a powertap to play around with, but give me one for my mtb too. :)

sunofa

I fell over again today, this time in the middle of U.K.'s campus. Turns out a screw had come out of my cleat and it wouldn't allow me to pop my right foot out cause it kept moving around on me. I had a moment where I was like, "unclip your left foot, unclip your left foot, it will come out. Why? I'm already falling to my right and unclipping my left foot isn't going to do me any good." I said a couple bad words after I got up off the ground. I'm pretty sure the girl standing close by got a good kick out of it. Luckily it was a little before class so there weren't tons of people around. Anyways, I think I am becoming "that guy."

Big News

Because of the failing economy and general hard-times for Clarksville A-team we had to scale down the size of the team bus for this upcoming season. I'll attach some photos so that when you see this thing role into a race venue, you know it's gonna be ON!



Oh yeah baby! It's got a 1.0 liter 3 cylinder engine with 5 speed manual transmission, which is gonna net me an average of somewhere in the 40 mpg range and maybe even more if I do a couple mods, such as putting pizza pans over the hubcaps, installing an electrically powered heat pump for the engine, like they do on diesels in cold climates and maybe seal up the bucket style headlights



Be jealous

Idiot

I did 50+ miler today and went a little harder than last time which resulted in some dead legs by the time I got back into town. Once I got into my neighborhood I nearly died coasting down a hill and not paying much attention. I guess I hit some salt or leftover frozen crap. It was like hitting a speed bump which caused the bike to buck me a little resulting in my left hand coming completely off the bars but luckily I saved it and the only damage I did was elevating my heart rate for a minute or two. About 200 yards later at a four way stop I decided to unclip my left foot instead of my right for some reason and of course my legs were so dead that I couldn't get out and ended up falling over in the street with cars all around me. It was awesome, I was annoyed but hopefully the cars around me got a good chuckle. That was my day, now I have to do some serious reading (on a friday night LAME!)

It made me think of this guy

falling over in Waverly Parking lot while Anthony and I sat there laughing.

playing

I got out and played in the snow a bit today, I waited too long though cause it got warm and stuff was getting too squishy. I did have a pretty funny wreck on one of the neighborhood streets, where I was apparently doing my best impersonation of Jan Ulrich in the TDF time trial seen below at minute 3:03, also notable skids at 1:25 and :25. Hope you guys got out and played some too. I don't know what I'll do for a ride tomorrow, maybe do a road ride on my mountain bike.

So I sold out

Working for the man, gotta wear the seafoam in '09. On the plus side, not every team has like 2 doctors, several pharmacists and a couple drug reps at their disposal, so any success will be pure talent and nothing out. Now, where is my new bottle of skilz???

Knews

So, the news is out, Cycler's Cafe stole Anthony from us, but they're going to regret it cause I'm going to train like never before and beat them all (in the fastest vegetarian, U.K. grad student mountain biker challenge). Rumor has it that anthony only agreed to be on their team because they took Millie hostage, and he kind of felt sorry for them anyway. Cycler's also has a blog now, which I will put a link to on here out of pure good sportsmanship.

In other news, this snow and stuff is crazy, I don't know whether to try going for a mtb ride or not. Will the snow pack up on my tires? Will I wreck into a frozen creek? Will an Abominable Snowman appear in the woods and steal my cliff bar?

My biggest goal of the upcoming season is to do this at least once:

your loss

all you doody heads missed out, except for andrew who did half the ride. Nice day for riding, aside from the salt on the road. now I'm beat and ready to eat a pizza


Ft. Duffield 2005

Thursday mid-40s 3 + hour road ride

I guess you responsible types might not be able to make it away from work, but I'm thinking I'll probably do a 3+ hour road ride on Thursday at 12 p.m. starting from Park Hills Dollar Tree here (on the corner of pimlico and man'o'war) out to Delong to athens walnut to n. clevland? across winchester rd. across newtown pike and so on till we come in on the backside of masterson station and then come through downtown to get back to chinoe or wherever you need to go, I'll complete the loop back to Park Hills Dollar Tree. You all know it and you all love it. Probably in the low 17 mph range depending on winds and group size.

Greg you could cut out from Thoroughbred times for a while, I'm sure they don't need you.

Here is a picture of a Cougar if I've ever seen one

Third time is the charm

The third mountain bike ride this morning since the "incident" last summer. Despite a flat tire, under-inflated fork and less than clamped bars, it was awesome. After all that has gone on as of late, riding the mtb has taken on a whole new level of fun and escape. I dont know what this season will hold, but it's going to be great just being out there riding. It's going to be 5 degrees tomorrow morning, things should be fast and fun.

So anywho, with all the nuptializing and whatnot lately, not much time to blog. First "race" (Snake Creek Gap TT) is coming up next month. Not sure what to expect other than pain from many areas, but am looking forward to getting a bit back into the swing of things.

Which reminds me, why the fascination with large birds? I am not innocent of an "oh hey, a duck!" but why? Anything larger than a raven and it's nothing short of seeing bigfoot. I saw a loon or crane or something like that the other day and almost ended up riding right into the Ohio River. We swerve, stare, point and/or poke at there mere glimpse at anything with a long wingspan. Maybe it's the fact that they could hurt us if they so choose, I dunno, but they are cool.

wanna be starting something

I've been riding the road lately since it has been in the 40s a lot. However, this weekend looks like it might be a good chance to ride the old mtb. I'm thinking Frankfort but could do eastern ky, green river, or younger's since they're all near the one hour drive mark for me. Anyone got any long group rides going? Wanna? Gentle Ben, I may call you.

In other news, school starts back for me tomorrow. Booo! I'm going to try to shoot for 3 rides a week though. Ideally, one Long slow on the weekends, maybe a 1-2 hour tempo during the week and a trainer ride. Might get back into the spin class to substitute for the trainer since it's more interesting to stare at the goof-balls who show up for class.

In the meantime the A-team is working on making one of these