staying on average

This year I am really trying to meet a goal of commuting 200 times to work equaling about 6000 commuting miles. To reach the 200 commute mark I need to ride to work an average of 4 days a week. I have had this same goal for the past 3 years and have never been able to reach it b/c of travel, some intentional rest days before races, or a week of for jury duty.

As of today, I have rode in 50 times, which puts me at 1,500 miles. I rode to work 20 times in March and only missed 2 days due to a work trip to Las Vegas. I am right on track to reach my goal. I know I am only 3 months in to the year, but the weather should be getting nicer soon making riding easier.

Now I need to keep putting in some consistent weeks while I can. Before I know it the summer travel schedule will pick up and it will be easy to fall behind.

Oh yeah, it is going to snow tomorrow. I did say it is going to get nice soon, didn't I?

First race of the year is April 18. The Durand road race in WI. It's time to start getting out of the saddle and building up some sprinting legs.

Welcome back spring

Friday night I went over to Timmy's house for dinner and a bike building sorie. I am getting antsy for spring and I wanted to do some part swaping on my current bikes to get them ready for cleaner drier streets. Since my shop is in the unheated garage, I sought warmth (and beer) in Tim's basement shop. Project builds included putting a Red group on my Primero and swapping my Chorus group to my Casseroll. I will post pictures later.

Saturday morning Joe and I planned to put in a long ride on the road. Our goal was 100 miles, but since neither of us have computers on our bike we can only estimate how far we rode. I can tell you this, When I got back to the house I logged about 5.5 hours of ride time. I dont think we did 100 miles but I am sure we did more than 80. When I left the house at 8am, it was about 24 degrees. I dressed light knowing it was going to reach high 40's. The air was cool to start but I was able to stay comfortable the whole ride.

Joe rollin into St. Paul

Our route took us through St.Paul and up to Stillwater where we stopped for coffee at the Bikery. We kinda stumbled across the coffee/bike shop, but we were very happy to find a bikecentric coffee shop in Stillwater. I wish this shop the best of luck and recommend you check it out if you in the area. From Stillwater we headed south to Afton and then home.

Overall my body felt good for the whole ride, The wind was blowing hard from the south east so the cross wind on the way home became a bit exhausting and my neck and abs got tired from holding the bike upright while leaning into the wind. All in all I am really happy with how the ride went and how I felt. Cant wait for summer and the single track to open

Enjoy the ride

So far the weekend has been off to a great start, and I still have Sunday left.

Switching to Clippless

After over 4 month of riding platform pedals with either a big winter snow boots or hiking boots, the weather has final warmed up to the point where I can comfortably ride in cycling shoes again.

What a difference it makes to be able to clip into my pedals again. At first the float in the pedals felt really awkward, but it didn't take long for me to get used to it again. And let me tell you it is a welcome change.

So you may ask, if it is so nice riding in clipless pedals why don't you ride them all winter; afterall they do make winter cycling shoes. For years I tried riding in the Lake winter boots but this fall I decided I had enough. For me, these boots never fit my feet and never really kept my feet warm. I was able to ride in them in temps down to about 20 degrees before my feet got cold.

I think decades years of playing hockey in freezing temps has damaged the circualtion feet, so my feet really get cold easily. In the past when I rode in temps about 10 below and I could never keep my feet warm. Since switching to real winter snow boots, I have rode down to 20 below and actually stayed pretty warm. It is been amazing how much easier it has been to ride with warm feet. Mentally, I have a lot more confidence going out in the cold and it is a lot of fun to stick my foot out moto style around the corners. I recommend everyone try riding in platforms for a little while.


Now playing: Screeching Weasel - My Brain Hurts
via FoxyTunes

Update

Since I really haven't posted in a while I will give you a brief update on what I have been up to the past couple of weeks.

Vacation- In the beginning of the month a group of us rented a cabin in Lutsen and spent the weekend snowboarding, downhill skiing, xc skiing, snowshoeing, cooking, eating, drinking, hot tubbing, laughing, and enjoying eachothers fabulous company. The weather was great and we had a fantastic time. It was good to take a couple days off of work and just relax.

Work- has been pretty busy getting ready for Frostbike. The expo starts on Friday, so this week will be pretty crazy for me making sure everything gets done in preparation for the the show.

Riding- I have been riding to work pretty much everyday this month. I have really enjoyed my time on the bike this winter. I don't know what is different this year from last, but I am having more fun on the bike in the cold. Recently the streets have dried up so I have been able to ride different bikes in and the commute is much faster since I don't need to worry about icy streets.

Racing?- This past week I have started thinking about racing again and what races I would like to enter. Due to some really import weddings this fall I will not be able to do two of my favorite races; the Dakota 50 and Chequamegon. It is kinda a bummer, but there are a lot of other races I can do to make up for them. Also, I will not be attending Sea Otter this year so am considering more road racing in the spring. In the summer I want to enter more long distance mtb rides like the Mohican 100, 12 hours of 9-mile, and maybe Salsa 2-4 solo. I also have some spare parts kicking around the house that I plan on building a new bike up with.

Music- Johnny gave me some new music (Tim Barry, Hot Water Music, and Avail) to listen to. All of which is good, but may not fit everyone's fancy.

Home life- Kate, the dingo, and I are all doing really well. Katie and I had a relaxing Valentines around the house. We had a nice egg bake for breakfast and spend the rest of the day around the house reading, watching the Tour of California and couple episodes of Deadwood.

No Title Neccesary

Look who joined the bandwagon.

I was wrong

Ten years ago, I would have never attended a Mason Jennings and Trampled by Turtles concert on my own free will. During my college years I thought musicians like this just played crappy hippie music. Back then I would've rather listened to the classics like Rancid, Bad Religion, or Fugazi. Well times have changed and so has my musical taste. I have expanded my collection of music to include more country, blue grass, folk and other sub genres of the latter.

Because of this new musical taste, on my own free will, I attended a Mason Jennings show with Katie and a group of friends. This was my second Mason show. I am a enjoy Mason, but the first show I attended just didn't capture my attention like I had hoped. I found it rather slow and I was bored. I was hoping my second show would be better; I had faith it would be. Last nights show was a fund raiser for one of Mason's and number of other band's sound guy. It was a loaded venue with The Pines, Haley Bonar, Trampled by Turtles, Cloud Cult, and Mason Jennings.

The show was great, Trampled by Turtles are an amazing band and Mason redeemed himself in my opinion. So I was wrong after all, Mason Jennings and TBT is not just crappy hippie music. It is still definitely hippie music, but I will not say it is crappy anymore. I look forward to seeing another TBT show in the future, but I can garantee I wont be in the front row.

I still listen to the punk rock like I did 10 years ago, but it is not the only music that rocks.
Chad, TJ, the Dans', and the other elder ONAG'rs, this is just one more thing I have learned from you. I am only sorry it took 10 years to sink in. I may have enjoyed the bbq's more if I could've sang along with the music.

Nothing has changed...

The weather has only got colder.
Yeah I know, I been exactly a month since I last posted anything. What can I say, the Holidays were good to me. I got to spend some very quality time with my family, I ate a lot, drank some boots, and I took 2 weeks off the bike. Instead of my daily commute to work, I exercised by running with Gretta, playing hockey at the local rink (walking distance from the house) and cross country skied.

Now that the Holidays have past and things are back to normal, I will put more effort into blogging a bit more frequently. But don't get your hopes up. This morning the air temp was 20 below. I had made plans the day before to ride in with another coworkers but after checking the forecast last night I decided not to ride. It took a little contemplation but I decided taking two days in a row off of riding would probably be good for me. After all it is really f'n cold out there! Considering on monday it was 16 below and my derailleurs and cables froze up less than 15 minutes into my ride and the way my fingers would freeze and thaw the last 15 minutes of the ride, I decided I didn't want to go through it all again. It has been nice to have the extra 3-4 hours in the day to spend with Katie, sit on the couch and read at night. But tommorrow I will be pulling on the layers again and meeting the crew at Colossal. That's right, Friday breakfast ride.

Have a good weekend everyone; I hear it is going to be hot one in MN!


Now playing: G. Love & Special Sauce - Shooting Hoops
via FoxyTunes