sunday century

last minute planning of a gravel century seemed like a good idea. with interest from decorah, iowa city, dubuque and the hopes of pulling some people from des moines, cedar falls seemed an appropriate place to start/end. 20 minutes on mapmyride.com left me hoping my route would lead us to gravel bliss and not a lot of missed turns, pavement and road construction. adam showed from iowa city and lance from dubuque so the three of us headed out. missed our first turn less than 10 miles in but didn't affect the route much at all. other than that we had tons of gravel, a handful of b roads, i think something resembling a d road that i thankfully didn't flat on, mild temps, occasional drizzle and some pretty good wind. nice tailwind all the way to the 50 mile halfway point then turned straight into it for 7 miles which really beat me down. one pretty good bonk about 85 miles in and made it back to cedar falls without having to get the big lights out. something like 7 hours ride time and just shy of 8 hours total time. not bad coming off a 12 hour work shift, 3 hours sleep and an hour and a half drive. adam rode impressively strong and both he and lance thankfully pulled me in the last couple of hours. fantastic time with some really good riders. some of the more memorable moments involve incredible disappointment over a bridge out that wouldn't allow us to ride an awesome looking b road we could see across the river, deciding to turn right on trapper rd without a sign telling us it was trapper just to avoid the hill in front of us, "you guys are craaaazy" from the convenience store worker in dumont, lance almot ending the ride for him and i after letting go of his bars in the wind, "i kinda hope i don't get into transiowa so i don't end up like ben" from adam and "good fucking lord let this be butler" spoken from the depths of my bonk fantasizing about the jerky
and orange slices i couldn't reach in my camelbak.

adam admiring the promise of another b road

apparently not everyone shares our love of the b road...that's a lot of bullets...

lance saying "this bike will make it through this ride without falling apart"...oops.

headed out...feeling pretty good at this point

the drive down, still dark out, still thinking this is a good idea

staring at the backs of lance and adam...got pretty used to this sight

"offseason"

i've known the day was coming for some time now. i wouldn't say i've been putting it off, just simply getting mentally prepared for the inevitable. i ran myself a little ragged this year and was a bit burnt out by the end of the season so i took some time off the bike and have since focused on riding when and where i want with no intentions of truly training. all of this has gotten me back into the right mindset of truly enjoying my riding and starting to really look forward to next year's events...especially the big one. and then a few things all sort of happened together and i knew it was time. a very long weekend of work with far too little sleep led to sleeping for a solid 11 hours monday night. waking up tuesday morning knowing i had to be extremely productive to not be disappointed in myself i also came across this blog post from charlie farrow.

so, tuesday became my first big day in a while. a couple hours of gravels in the morning to avoid the frost/thaw of the trails, followed by getting back into my workout routine, a whole lot of lasagna, and an hour and a half on the trails. considering i still had to shower and get to work i was a bit shot by the end of the night but felt good to really work hard again. point being...the "offseason" is far from what its name implies. the next six months will be a collection of "this could be our last trail ride of the season" rides, thousands of miles of snow covered and well below-freezing gravel rides, lots of riding in the dark, working out to improve lacking core and upper body strength, and regularly pushing myself to the brink of failure in an attempt to remind myself how truly difficult and painful rides like transiowa can be. having finished it last year and planning to run it with a freewheel this year has left me fearful of becoming complacent and possibly arrogant about the ease of finishing it. so the plan is to return to my training plan from the past 2 years. ride, ride, ride, ride. ride because i want to. ride because i need to. ride when its nice out, ride when it flat out sucks. ride until it hurts, then ride until i'm delirious. ride until i know i'm stronger than i was last year. wake up everyday with such an intense fear of failing again that i continue to bury myself on the bike. should be a fun offseason. and i guess its officially started.

good days and photos

gravels in fall, riding with the little man and new ink. been a good stretch of days.

wet gravels lead to filthy bikes
not all fall gravel rides are sloppy

plenty of sun and fall colors

larsson tearing up the pines

how long til i'm chasing him cause i can't keep up?

working back through the prairie

end of what turned out to be an awesome monday

new ink...before pic

drawing and a little bit of outline done

sun rays filled

brock doing his thing

getting the clouds filled

sleeve's getting close to finished...gotta get the moon and clouds filled/finished, color the night sky, add a little more water then go around and touch up the entire leg. it'll be done someday.

summer drizzler and some other stuff

a handful of well-intentioned locals showed up for the sizzler and were almost immediately greeted with rain. increasingly greasy and dangerous trails brought an end to the festivities but most seemed to have a pretty good time regardless. all eyes on boone now...really enjoy that course and looking forward to seeing the group of iowa racers that will inevitably be there.

got in another metric yesterday...truthfully it was completely unintentional. was looking at maybe a 3 hour ride and by the time i hit my halfway point it was obvious i was gonna be in the mid to upper 50 mile range by the time i got home. so, i just kept pedaling and ended up somewhere around 65 miles.

mailday yesterday brought me a stick. ever since i was a kid i have been absolutely terrible about stretching, to the point that it has led to more than one injury. add that to my cramping issues and i have to do something. i know myself well enough to realize that i'll never get myself to stretch appropriately so hopefully this thing will help.

if i work hard enough at it, i too could look like this guy. thanks stick!

sunday century

toured the small towns around here yesterday...ridgeway, cresco, protivin, spillville, fort atkinson, calmar, festina, ossian, decorah. 103 miles, roughly 85 gravel, 7 hours 30 minutes total time, 6 hours 45 minutes ride time, 6 bottles carborocket, 3 bottles clean water, 1 jr. cheeseburger, 1 jr. chicken sandwich, 1 large slice pepperoni/sausage pizza, 1 can pepsi, 1 pack orange sport beans, 2 espresso love gu's, 0 cramps, 0 stomach issues, 1 extra mile ridden looking for directions dropped on the gravel road only 25 miles in. pretty hot out there so i made a big effort to keep the heart rate way down. although i don't ride with a heartrate monitor i could tell how crappy i felt everytime it got elevated. started the day with a good application of 60spf sunscreen and it held up surprisingly well. i was toast last night. showered, played uno with larsson, ate most of a pizza from pizza hut and died on the couch before 8 p.m. planning to just relax at the pool with larsson today.

no red wing

no bike so no racing. james has said he's gonna take care of the fork. working with vassago on getting a new frame asap. working with travis on getting a backup bike and a suspension fork. in the meantime gonna finish my eggs and cheerios and head out for a full gravel century to make up for not racing. first few hours might hurt a bit.

another good night

chris was in town to do his usual counselor thing at luther's distance running camp so i swung by campus monday night to watch him try to relive his youth playing ultimate with the campers. headed out from there for a gravel ride down to spillville to watch our head chef play volleyball. i planned a 20 mile route and was treated to mild temps and an incredible sunset. pics don't do it justice but it was the best i could do. tuesday morning brought a crazy early wonder left (popular 9 mile running route) and me riding water support for chris and his buddy dee brown.

ultimate

moo

shadows starting to get real long

iowa countryside

not sure what night it was actually full, but it was big and bright and led me into spillville

wonder left

staff mtg, 4th, 5th and a metric

wow...what an awesome weekend. thursday night's staff meeting was wildly successful, or successfully wild...not real sure. fire and beers out back of my place with no serious injuries although pavlov's idea of classical conditioning apparently doesn't apply to me. after burning my stomach with the lid from the fire pit i proceeded to repeat the action 20 minutes later and burn myself again, only a little worse this time. by the time i kicked everyone out at 4 a.m. i think we had discussed work somewhere along the line and can officially consider it a staff meeting.
thursday night left me feeling less than stellar on friday, so after refusing to get out of bed for most of the day a motorcycle ride was substituted for a training ride. on to work where i ran into austin...a guy i rode trails with (who kind of handed me my ass) about 6 years ago when i was just starting to ride. he was in town and plans were made to meet downtown after i closed my bar. another fun night out with plans to meet for a trail ride in the morning.
felt better saturday morning (slightly) and met austin at 10 and got some good time in playing in the dirt. on to ice age 3 with the fam and an awesome display of fireworks put on by the owner of the bar in his cul de sac. honestly, for a "private" show it was about as impressive as a professional show. larsson loved it and had a great time playing with the tons of kids are there.
sunday brought a barbecue with the ogaras, duranceaus, grouws and reyersons. 8 kids running around and playing on the slip n' slide while we grilled and had a couple beers. once everybody left i headed out for a solid gravel effort. once again reminded that i do in fact like the sun, it just doesn't like me. 62 miles and somewhere around 4 1/2 hours and i was cooked. this weekend had apparently left my body a bit broken down because this metric destroyed me. i was virtually non-functional when i was done. couldn't carry on a phone conversation with my brother or really move off the recliner until it was time to go die for the night. long weekend...super fun weekend...time to start recovering for red wing this weekend.

plenty of cool old bridges around here
a handful of transiowa v.4 got to see this sign shortly before turning around

second time i've stumbled across this old church

gorgeous day

dirt burger and other updates

my version of the dirt burger is shorter than some as it was broken into chunks by that nasty thing called work. regardless, bikes were ridden, drinks were drunk, drunks drank, sleep was optional and limited, fun was had. my participation involved a spirited ride through the back alleys of decorah (led by a guy who has never even been here before) punctuated with the occasional derby. i held my own in the derbies but never came away with a coveted victory, however i did manage to severely taco the wheel of the guy i took second to in one of the matches. as bad as i felt it seemed inevitable. saturday brought some trail time then a long night getting a wedding reception drunk so i missed that night's festivities. sunday i showed up for the scheduled gravel ride to realize (not surprisingly) the weekend had taken its toll on many and there would only be six of us headed to bluffton. trevor, marty, deke, jon-o, spinner and i headed out of town into some menacing clouds. soon it was dumping on us. the rain broke as we entered the bar, then restarted a couple hours later as we remounted our bikes ensuring that most of the ride out and back would be soggy. still a ton of fun. the dirt burger in general was successful in encouraging a fair amount of general jackassery. don't be surprised if this happens again. small is fun, bigger might be more, either way the results will most likely be similar.

on another note, i did get to attend larsson's second ever soccer game (i was unable to make the first). he's also now doing the luther soccer camp that julie helps run. seems he's well on his way to reaching his lifelong goals of someday being the goalie on her high school girls soccer team and then returning as her assistant coach.

and finally, it seems i am caving and will be moving to the darkside and finally joining the facebook community. here's my justification (really this is to make myself feel better but feel free to read)...i've had an account for like a year and a half because i had to register to view some pictures after a race i did. i never did anything with the account but occasionally people must have searched my name and found that i existed and asked me to be a friend. i've never accepted any since i'm not actually on there but i get these emails from time to time telling me of another request. after last weekend's reunion with my high school friends and a rash of friend requests from some people i've met through my racing, i figure the time has come. so...if you're one of those select few who have asked me to be a friend in the last year or so (i think there might be 2 or 3 that actually read this) you'll probably be getting an acceptance...finally. there's my justification...on to dirt burger pics.

marty

spinner and trevor

deke and jon-o

this riding thing is hard work, good thing we got road beers before we left bluffton

fisty enjoying the high life as well

recovery ride?

left yesterday intending to do a long slow gravel ride after riding myself into the ground sunday. somehow that turned into my first ever sub-4 hour gravel metric. 62 miles and change up to harmony and back in something like 3 hours 58 minutes. weather was perfect, wind was mild, road conditions were fast, legs felt good...felt good to ride hard and have the body respond well.

big ring inspired evidence of the fastest i've ever gone on a gravel road. 43 mph going down coldwater creek hill just north of bluffton.

weekend

got some friends rockin gravel in kansas this weekend...good luck to everyone out there. got to ride with one of the organizers during transiowa. awesome guy. i'll be hitting the trails today to shake down the jabber now that travis has it up and running again then i'll be heading up to afton tomorrow. something about this course does it to me everytime. i'm not sure i've ever finished a race at afton without puking during the race. and now i get to ride an extra lap. awesome. i actually really enjoy this course, its just a mean course.

coal stacked

thursday night group ride turned into 4 guys on 3 bikes headed to bluffton. actually made it to an amazing lookout just past bluffton for some beers, then the bluffton store for a lot more beer and some to go. the ride home got pretty interesting as o'gara and fuhrmann don't have much choice but to push the pace on the single speed tandem of death. friedhof and i did our best to hang on. bad decisions were made, such as trying to race the charcoal black two-seater up wagon hill...that's when i got coal stacked. a stop at the top of the hill to assess the damage and work on the to-go beers then into town a couple of stops at some local establishments. gorgeous night, fun ride, i still blame brian for unnecessarily cutting me off while passing me on a 40 foot wide gravel road :)

l to r: friedhof and travis getting friedhof's bike rideable, the ss tandem of death (coal stack), o'gara and brian

most amazing view in winneshiek county, just look for the string and avoid the poison ivy

headed back

pretty sure what brian is saying is "i'm about to ruin your night"

coal stacked

first time i've ever laid it down on gravel not because of snow and ice. we were moving pretty good (racing) but at least it wasn't on one of the 35+mph descents

transiowa tinkering

the hand is doing fairly well but the island certainly took its toll. made it obvious that the transiowa modifications under consideration were now a necessity. so today brought the first trial run with the ergons and mary bars. partially because i can't ride the jabber now that all hub bearings and brake pads have to be replaced and brake calipers had to be entirely disassembled and overhauled (big thanks to ouachita and the island :))

one ride and no doubt i'll be running this set up for transiowa

awesome day for a ride