Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I was on my regular Tuesday night right just like normal. We had just gone through our warmup when we hit Duthie Hill (Not steep or anything just long enough to hit about 38-40 MPH.) A gap opened up pretty quick when out of nowhere I hit a pothole. I still don't know how it happened but I lost complete grip on the bars. All of the sudden I was much too close to my bars and swerving and I could see as my water bottles ejected from the cages in slowmo. Some how I by some form of magic I didn't hit pavement and stayed on the bike. Either by dumb luck or by impecable handling skills I didn't die. I have no idea how I pulled it off or how I hit the pothole. Ive been down the same hill dozens of times with no problems. I'm still alive and now have no water bottles.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Tuesday schedule

This is my schedule for a high effort ride with a few discrepancies here and there. This is from today which was a group ride and I took it easy all day and just prepped for the ride.

9:30 AM: Wake up
9:35 AM: Turn on computer (duh)
9:37 AM: Make coffee
9:40 AM: Drink a cup of coffee while checking email and wasteing time on the net
10:30 AM: Make breakfast (today was two eggs with two peices of toast along with a second cup of coffee)
11:00 AM: Shower
1200 AM: Bored --- TV
12:30 PM: Lunch (Salamy sandwhich with chicken noodle soup)
1:00 PM: Still bored --- more TV Law and Orders on
2:00 PM: Still bored --- still Law and Order --- or was it CSI
3:00 PM: Bored --- CSI
4:00 PM: Bored --- just plain bored --- TV sucks
4:25 PM: So bored that I set out the bibs and jersey with all the stuff I will need for the ride
4:30 PM: More food --- salamy sandwhich
4:50 PM: Nuttella on a peice of bread
5:00 PM: I don my bibs and jersey and shove things in pockets
5:12 PM: Getting ready to leave. Listen to some music to get in the zone while brushing teeth
5:20 PM: Roll out and feel the nasty thunk of a flat
5:35 PM: Roll out --- again
6:00 PM: Start of ride

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Take a penny leave a penny

Alright so heres the senario at play here. You're on a bike trail and you start drafting off of someone and chances are that the rider your drafting off of will get pissed. Noone likes to take a pull for some random person on a path, it's even worse when someone doesn't ask if they can draft behind you. It's one of those unwritten rules that you don't do that.

Yesterday I was on my way to the U-district from Redmond on the Burke Gilman trail when someone comes up on my wheel and starts riding in my draft. At first I was a bit peeved that he was doing this so I put the hammer down and started pulling hard but he was like my shadow and probably had much fresher legs than me. This went on for a while when he came up in front and started pulling for me. This was great and I was very happy at this point. He was even signalling for people, stops, and debry. This is how it should be done: if you draft off of someone expect to take your turn in the wind pulling and feeling a burn: its another unwritten rule. After I realized he was willing to work with me and take turns I started signalling like the lead-out of a group ride. The other rider and myself took about two turns each and set the pase pretty high: I could tell that we were both getting pretty tired. This lasted until we reached the U-district and he branched off and exchanged out respective "thanks for the pull" and went on our merry way. It was just a perfect cap to an otherwise great day of riding. It's great to know that there are very nice riders out there.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Hello there

Hey there everybody. Ive been telling myself that I was going to start a blog about bike kinds of things for sometime now. I just haven't gotten around to it. Well now that I've been layed up sick and out of training for the past couple of days, I'm bored. I'm hoping that I can impart some of my limited bike wisdom and irrelovent banter upon you guys.