An Off Month

After 612 miles, June is done. Not a bad tally considering that last June saw only 447, but still significantly down from the past two months, each at 700+. Had it not been for my resting in preparation for the Lyle Pearson 200 and LeBow Century, I'd have likely made that mark again. 'Salright - a fair trade, I'd say. Both of those rides were a ton of fun.

Oh boy, here come the %#&%$@ fireworks. Eighty-seven brush fires in the past three days isn't enough for the rednecks around here.

Hubbard Time Trial

Another great TT. I improved my time from the last TT by six seconds despite the wind and royally screwing up my turn. Plus tonight we had two TT rookies: Gatlin's dad Mike (thanks in part to my underhandedness) and my commute buddy Justin. Both of them did great.

Justin is a great match for me - about my age and about my speed - I gained maybe 30 seconds on him over the ten miles. He and his friends decided to enter their first triathlon & race one another in a couple months, and I have a feeling he's gonna make them cry. :) He's also planning to be on my 2010 Lyle Pearson team, and we may even be able to team up on a stage and paceline if we stay so evenly matched through next spring.

Mike, on the other hand, has been harping about how out of shape he is since we met this spring, but he absolutely destroyed all the expectations for a slow time that he'd built up with his sandbagging. He clocked just 30 seconds over my first ten-mile TT time ever. Great job Mike!

Hubbard Time Trial, Take Two

I finally got to ride my second Hubbard Time Trial yesterday. Clocked 25:40 - about half a minute better than my first attempt at this course a few weeks ago. Gat came out too and showed how it's done on his first time trial with a time in the low 27-minute range - way faster than my first. And he wasn't even in his aero bars the whole time. A little work on pedaling efficiency and he'll be tearing things up. He also wants me to run with him. We'll see how that goes. :) Kristin Armstrong rode there too, and of course shooshed past us at lightning speed. Being soundly throttled by an Olympic gold medalist is about as close to bicycling stardom as I stand to get. :)

LeBow 2009

What a great ride. To be sure, all the LeBow rides I've been on have been great; but this year's was truly exceptional - both as a charity ride and for personal and social reasons.

Let me just get the social reasons out of the way quickly because I'm a bit sick of talking about it but still feel the need. This week saw the third fatal collision between a bicycle and a car in the valley in as many weeks. I'm angry about it beyond words, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I considered not riding this weekend because of my anger, but I realized on my way to the start of LeBow that that would have been the worst possible decision. A good ride with some friends was exactly what I needed and likely exactly what the Treasure Valley's cycling community needed.

This was to be my first century ride (that's 100 miles for the uninitiated; and a metric century is 100 km - ~62 miles). I've made the LeBow ride my venue for new distance thresholds a couple years in a row now, and this was no exception. For this ride, I tagged along with some friends of mine - Bruce & Ken (the Wiley brothers) and their friends. They're all strong riders but not particularly interested in speed, so they were perfect to force me to pace myself so I wouldn't bonk at mile 50. We did the whole thing at an average of about 15 MPH. And it just occured to me that I didn't do much pulling. I suppose I did some, but our friend John probably did more than his share. Anyway, that easy pace allowed me to keep enough in my tank for my usual butt-busting homeward hammerfest at 20+. Like usual, this wasn't planned, but I suppose as John said of others earlier in the ride, I "could smell the barn." :)

But before I talk about that, I'll review the first 90 miles. They were all special. The ride down Pump Road was exhilarating, and I will have to make that a climb I do a few times in the coming weeks & months. I finally stopped to see Map Rock after three or four rides going right past it! The course was beautiful, most of the roads were acceptable, and all of the rest stops were excellent. Great food for refueling and great people to chat up.

The weather up to my aforementioned solo homeward effort had been near perfect - a few sprinkles got us a bit damp but everything for the most part was dry, the temperature was in the 60s, and the wind was minimal. After breaking away from John though, I found myself in a torrential downpour of rain and wind and hail. And shortly thereafter I saw a gold Pontiac Aztec driving out of the maelstrom. I saw that and thought, "Oh I know who that is!" Sure enough, a hand came off the steering wheel & pointed at me. Yep - Mike again coming out to check on me. :) And this time his son Gatlin was with him. They teamed up to take some interesting pictures including the ones shown here. The first is in the heart of the storm - it doesn't capture the wildness, but you can see I'm soaked. The second is my favorite - a couple miles after the first, charging up the hill on Midway Rd from Roosevelt to Lake Lowell Ave.

Thanks to so many people for helping me on my first century: Ken & Bruce for letting me tag along with them, everyone at TRHS for organizing the ride, all the volunteers, Rhiannon for holding it all together, and of course Mike and Gat for (again) cheering me on and taking pictures. And speaking of Mike & Gat, they kicked some butt on the 35-miler - both have made marked progress in just a few weeks. Great job, guys.

The Lyle Pearson 200

On Tuesday, June 2, I got a call from Tyler; who told me that a second teammate of his in the Lyle Pearson 200 (map) was out with an injury.  He said that he'd suggested me as an alternate.  I agreed, flattered, to do what I could.  With only four days notice, I could do little to prepare but rest.  The other team members had been seeking out hills and riding intervals for months.  I'd done nearly zero intervals since the Broome TT, and my only intense riding was at the only Hubbard Time Trial I'd managed to ride so far.  The only appreciable hill I'd ridden this year (truly ever on a road bike) was on the Arbon Valley ride.  

Anyway, my total climbing for the entire Arbon Valley ride was less than or equal to the elevation gain on my first leg of today's ride.  Whew!  But I rode it and did pretty well.  A real highlight was seeing Mike, a friend from Skinny Tire, show up to drive along and whoop it up a little for us.  His cheering gave me a bundle of extra energy and took my mind off the pain for a short while, and I found myself going a couple MPH faster after our encounter.  Much appreciated, Mike - sincerely.  I'm smiling in the picture shown here only because I was so pleased to see you.  And here's the BIG highlight for the day: at the beginning of that leg, Daniel (my teammate) handed off the lead to me, and I was able to hand it off to Tyler.  And a little icing on that cake: John (another teammate - actually the guy whose place I took after he hurt his knee) said that the lead that we built up had people talking.  But as he quickly pointed out, "There comes a time when the hare knows that the hawk will catch him."  :)  The faster riders generally started later than the slower ones, so it was only a matter of time before the heroes would catch us.  A mechanical difficulty meant that Tyler relinquished the front spot on the following descent and our glory would not survive another stage - but that's okay because he's still alive.  :)

Anyway, moving on to my second leg . . . this one was from Banner Summit to Stanley - losing a total of about 650 feet in elevation.  It was one of the longest segments of the race - about 25 miles, and the first six miles or so was a significant but relatively gentle descent (less than 1%) that gave me momentum to carry through the rest of the leg, which undulates 18 more miles down to Stanley losing 400 more feet from the base of the descent.  About half-way along this leg, I felt my batteries draining and knew that I'd be useless on another leg (I was slated to participate with everyone else in the last leg).  Knowing that the others would be able to move faster on that last leg without me, I determined to blow everything I had left right where I was.  So I held my steady state until Stanley appeared before me, about two miles away.  Seeing my goal, I judged myself, gritted my teeth, and successfully emptied my tank in those last two miles en route to the transition.

There, I handed off the radio to Tyler, who had the unenviable task of riding the next leg (probably the longest leg) alone & into the wind.  I really got off easy in this race with my assignments.  Rod and Daniel are the two guys on our team that really deserve kudos - they both rode up & down Galena Summit and blew straight through the last transition area to pull us to the finish line while Tyler & I lounged in the truck (Tyler spent himself on his last solo leg too).

Results were just posted a while ago, and we finished in 31st place out of 69 teams.  Not bad at all.  Anyway, it was a great time.  I've already started work on assembling my own team for next year.