Off road cycling

The other night i was chatting online with a friend of mine and we were sharing funny ride stories. Both of our stories happened in the same area and reliving my story still made me laugh so i thought i'd share it here.

For those who don't know my whole cycling history here's a real quick cliff notes version. Caught the cycling bug freshman year of high school (88). raced for 3 years. went to college. stopped doing anything active. got married. had kids. woke up one day and realized i was over 300lbs. in the fall of 2002 i dug my centurion lemans back out and started riding. that's when this story takes place.

that fall i started riding a 10 mile out and back course that was mostly on a bike trail but also included a big hill out of the river valley. at this point i was wearing tennis shoes and using toe clips. i had bike shorts but i would put regular shorts over them. on top i would wear a 3x tshirt.

on this particular day on my way back home it started raining. actually it was a downpour. because of the rain i decided to try a shortcut thru a residential neighborhood. i never had gone this way before but in my head it seemed shorter.

what this route did was instead of just one hill it took me over many. by this time I'm completely soaked and the water is just running down the streets. I get to the top of a hill and start down the other side. looking ahead i see that at the bottom of this hill is a sharp right turn. there's no other way to go. about half way down this hill i realize that my brakes are doing absolutely nothing.

when i reach the bottom of the hill i decide there's no way to make the turn so i just keep going straight. fortunately there are no curbs and i just miss a fence. so now I'm in somebody's yard. at some point i get both feet out of the toe clips and i am literally skiing thru their yard, both feet on the ground, bike still under me. I finally come to a complete stop, almost at the very back of their yard. I sheepishly turn the bike around, walk back to the road, and continue home. As far as i know nobody saw me but i can't imagine how funny that looked.

The red dot's on the pic show my "progress."

New Favorite Sport

So I found my new favorite offseason sport. It's crit racing on ice. now i just gotta figure out where to train for this.

It's been a while since i've posted anything so i'll give a couple updates.

Training: It's been a winter of starts and stops. Just when i seem to kick off my training something seems to happen that interrupts. I had started another study at gatorade which included 2 straight weeks of doing 1 1/2hrs at their lab. All was going well until i went to take a stress test and my blood pressure measured really high. That along with the rash i had gotten from the industrial cleaner they use to clean the showers at my work, was enough to boot me off the study. I'm still not sure what the bp thing was since it wasn't that high before or even 1 hour after the test but what can i do? I get to go back in a couple weeks and try again. More and more i'm realizing to try and really start my training program before i can get outside and ride is not really going to work. I'm doing weights, skating, and riding the trainer in the basement just trying to keep overall fitness and I'm doing a much better job than last year.

Ice Rink: The rink has been a disaster so far. Because of the dog putting a million holes in it, plus neighbor kids not being able to stay off it i was praying for a total thaw. Well i got it! So this past satuday i spent 6 hours on my hands and knees, covering every square inch of the liner. I used a whole roll of patch tape and still missed some. Fortunately i got some glue that works under water and i think patched most of the other holes. It's now flooded and we are having a good freeze. I think we should be ok in a couple of days.

Finally check out this. I'm sorry but doing a 100 miles on your rollers is nuts. What makes it even crazier is what time he started riding.