A Retrospective on 2009

I always get quite melancholy around the new year. I very much look forward to my plans for the upcoming year, but I spend a lot of time lamenting the chances not taken and the experiences I'll never get to have again. My heart breaks all over again reliving the losses of my loved ones who've exited my life over the past year. But this year I resolved early to focus on the positive experiences, and to that end I've been constructing this post for a few months now. And in order to avoid melancholy this evening I'm gonna finish it off. Below is a list of bike things I'm looking back on with gladness. pride, and other happy thoughts.

I created & solidified many riding friendships:

• Justin
• Mike
• Gatlin
• Michelle (thanks for finally getting me into your commute routine)
• The Brothers Wiley
• Steve

Two 700-mile months

My first century (thanks to the Wileys there too)

5000-mile year

Races:

• Jason Broome TT
• Lyle Pearson (and heres for a fun 2010 race!)
• State Crit
• BBHC
• State TT
• Hidden Springs
• Nearly every ride of the season with Gatlin

Thanks to:

• Tyler for support - material, logistical, emotional, nutritional, organizational
• Gatlin for the rides and the encouragement (and making me look damn good in the duathlon . . . not so much for making me look like a fool on Bogus)
• Mike for the support and the self-deprecating humor on rides
• Justin for stroking my gearheadedness and pulling me (especially homeward in the heat)
• Kate for putting up with all my crap, for standing alone in the cold to watch my first race ever, and for plucking my back hair
• Will Lindsay and Scott Hoover for doing far more than their share of standing around on Thursdays
• McT for all of his support, advice, and encouragement
• Bruce & Ken for keeping us riding through the cold
• All of you for reading this garbage and supporting me

And now I'm gonna go spend some quality time...

Next Season

It's been a while. I guess I should post something. Perhaps it's a bit premature, but I'm getting pretty fired up about the 2010 race season already. My team is now registered for the Lyle Pearson 200 in June and I'm talking about getting into spin classes for some conditioning.

But my fear is that I'll be forsaking some good riding (or at least not enjoying it as much as I could) through the winter. Thanks to my friend Bruce, my friends and I have been getting out for rides every weekend and lucking out with some dandy weather so far. Okay the space bar on this keyboard is sticking and it's driving me nuts. This post is over.

Veterans' Day Ride

Now that I've got a bit more stuff installed on my new laptop, I can post a new entry for the Vets' Day ride I took yesterday. Speaking of that, to any & all veterans tuning in, happy Veterans' Day wishes (belated) and thanks (as always) to you for your dedication and sacrifices.

My own service to veterans this year was a bike ride with a salty old sailor. Mike & I went for a fifty-miler. Down into the Snake River Canyon, past Map Rock (stopping for a look), back up near Marsing, and then around Lake Lowell before rolling back into Nampa. We got rained on just a little and dealt with more wind than we'd have liked, but all in all it was a great fall ride.

Mike is tantalizingly close to his own goal for the year. After our fifty on Wednesday, he's just twenty or thirty miles shy of 3000. We've got another ride on Saturday, so barring a catastrophe he'll make his goal then if not before. Awesome job Mike!

Goodbye October

Yesterday was the inaugural ride of the group ride that has yet to be named but is all about riding through the winter. We've kinda decided to start at one of Nampa's coffee shops and ride to a coffee shop in one of the neighboring towns - plenty of opportunities to get warm! This was all Bruce Wiley's idea - and what a great one! A quick search of Google Maps around Kuna a couple nights ago yielded the Trellis Bistro. We were fairly pleased - I'm sure that we'll end up there again this winter.

Mike flatted on the way back, and that ended up being just what the doctor ordered. Most of the riders decided to keep on riding and leave Mike, Trevor, and me behind to catch up after fixing

the flat. So we fixed it and got jamming again - kept it above 20MPH for pretty much the rest of the ride. Got stopped by a train just before catching the lead group, and ended up having to work hard to catch up again before rolling back into the barn.

Mike & I were chatting on the way to Kuna when Mike mentioned that he was over 400 miles for October. "Excellent!" I said, "That's farther than I've ridden this month by a long shot." He expressed his doubt at this, so after returning home I took a look at Cyclistats for a resolution. Well heck, I'm over 500 miles for October! That's actually more miles than I rode in July! And

compare that to the 82 miles from last October - holy shnikies! So that's cool. And I'm now past 4900 miles on the year. 5000 is pretty much a sure thing now (I'll hopefully have that by next weekend), and my ultimate goal of 5300 is well within sight. If November is as good to me a October, then I'll have it before the month is out.

Mileage update

Crested 4700 miles today. If I wasn't such a lazy shlepp then I'd be closer to 4800, but I didn't ride to work even once this week. First time for that since January.

A new infatuation

With my ride to Emmett yesterday, I'm over 4500 miles now. 800 more to go. There's a light at the end of the tunnel - I just have to reach it before the end of the year.

Anyway, I've recently become very enamored of this screen from Cyclistats. It's a bar graph of my daily mileage since I started recording my ride stats. Each blue bar represents a day, and the height of each bar is the total mileage for that day with the scale on the left (so multiple rides per day get stacked on top of one another). The vertical green line is New Year's Day 2009. The difference between the two years is remarkable, no? One thing that struck me is that giant two-week gap with zero rides in May 2008 - our honeymoon. Without that hiatus, I'd likely have gotten over 3000 miles last year. That woulda been great, but there'd be no way I coulda doubled that this year. So thanks to my in-laws for sending me away. :)

The most striking feature though is the large number of 50-mile days this year. These are almost all commute days. Last year I rode to work several times but rode all the way home only occasionally, opting instead to hop off the bus at Gold's for a 33-mile day. You can see lots of them in peak season 2008.

After looking at this for a while, I realize that I need more long days next year - 70+ miles. Kinda funny - that 67-mile day in 2008 (LeBow metric century) was the longest of my life at the time. I wept that afternoon as I barreled homeward ten miles out. A year on, 60+ is almost routine. I had a similar experience with my 30+ mile LeBow ride the year before. Does that mean that my 108-mile record this year will be commonplace for me next year? Here's hoping!

Hidden Springs Duathlon

After Gat & I'd discussed going out to Glenn's Ferry for a road race out there today, we decided instead earlier this week to enter the Hidden Springs Duathlon as a team. That suited me just fine - I didn't have to run. :) Our friend Steve's lips are faster than his legs. In the Land of Talking he does mighty fine, but we had to go show him how things are in the Land of Doing. There's a beer riding on this so stay tuned.

Gatlin's a machine. Having not done any running in months, he still managed to get through the first of his TWO 5Ks in ~21 minutes and put me on the bike course first of all the teams (that I noticed anyway). I was riding with the elite riders. I fell in behind a guy on a TT bike right after the start and hung with him a few lengths behind him all the way up to the pass and down Seaman's Gulch, then I took the turn onto Hill Rd FAR better than he did and passed him after exiting. But he made me look foolish on the flats (Hill Rd) with his aero bars (I chose my Look rather than the TT bike because of the climbing, descending, & a couple tight turns), and he was soon a good distance ahead of me. Two or three more riders passed me after that as well but I didn't pay much attention - I was holding what I felt was a good pace. In hindsight, maybe I coulda pushed a bit more. Maybe it's time for a heart rate monitor. Anyway I got back into the transition area, gave the timing chip back to Gatlin, and he was off again for the finishing leg. Got that done in fine fashion as well, perhaps even faster than his first.

Anyway one of the people that passed me must have been a team rider because no one passed Gatlin and we ended up taking second for male road teams and 11th overall for the road course. The results are here (look for "CREAGER, Gatlin" near the bottom of page 2), but no splits are reported yet, so it has yet to be determined (no later than Monday according to the website) who's buying whom a beer in the near future. The picture shows Gatlin taking off after transition 2 to make up the time I lost. :) The best part about that picture, though, is the tan line on his leg indicating how much biking he's done this season.

OH! And Rusty will be happy to know that we beat the team that included a guy wearing a Harvard jersey. I even talked a little smack to him for you - thought about busting out "Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow wow wow!" on my way out of the transition as he was still standing there but decided against it. :)

Mileage Record

First, check out the movie that McT made using a pirated picture of me to commemorate the Bogus Basin Hill Climb. :)

This week had a few firsts: for instance Monday was my first time up Pump Rd (steep!) and yesterday I had three tire punctures in one commute. Also, I passed 4000 miles on the year this week - first time for that. Last year didn't even see 3K. And with yesterday's ride on the dump loop and commutes, I've got a little over 4070. And there's an STP ride a little later this morning that'll put me tantalizingly close to, if not over, 4100. So what's all this mean? Not a whole lot unless you're me. And I'm me so I'm gonna make a big deal out of it.

I've been eyeing the 5K mile mark for some time now but haven't quite felt confident enough in my ability to reach it so didn't really say much. But now, after actually taking the time to do some math, I'm going for it. 900 more miles before the year's end is very doable so long as the weather cooperates. Five thousandth mile, here I come. In fact, 5300 miles - still achievable - would double last year's mileage. Okay I gotsta start preparing for STP . . .

Bogus Basin Hill Climb

This one was lots of fun. Four hundred of my closest friends all heading up one twisty road with me.

Having never been up Bogus on a bike (and only once by car) I didn't really know what to expect. Tyler's advice was to take it easy on the first half since that's the steep stuff, then go harder once the worst of the switchbacks are behind you. I took that advice to heart and rode for a while with my friend Steve - a strong rider to be sure but not constructed for ascents. Gatlin chilled with the two of us for less than a mile but forged ahead and was out of sight after not too long. I figured he'd bonk and I'd pass him near the top, but in hindsight I don't know why I'd have thought that. With his strong running background, Gatlin's got the distinct advantage of knowing how much he can push himself and how much he's got in reserve. At the center of his dashboard lies a well calibrated digital fuel gauge. All I've got is an idiot light that pops on at 1/16 of a tank. :) So once he was away, I never saw him again. Along the way, Mike stopped at several turn-outs for photo opportunities and was giving each of us reports on the other as we passed. Gatlin not only never faded, but he continued to pull away from me pretty much the whole way. Note to self: Keep Gatlin reeled in if you want to sprint with him at the end. :)

But I passed Tyler and Rod, one of the other guys I rode the Lyle Pearson with this year, about half way up. The fourth guy in our LP team, Daniel, finished ahead of Gatlin. Daniel's skinnier than I am - born to climb. Actually speaking of passing, I don't think I got passed by anyone at all after I determined to go after Gatlin. Of course by then anyone who had any dreams of being a hero had already gone. :) But yeah, I passed a LOT of people including a couple that I know put a minute or more into me at the Hubbard TTs, so that felt good. Anyway here are the results. I'm 205 overall, and Gatlin's 171. Oh and there's Cycloid just about right between us. The official clock was significantly faster than mine. And what's this? Only 13 women placed ahead of me? Geez ladies! Take some pride in yourselves! :)

The ride down was an absolute blast. I was giggling for a good while. :) Winding down through the trees is great fun. Gatlin got stung by a bee or something on the way down and that was less fun, but it didn't hurt me at all. :) I kept my bike reigned in a little during the switchbacky parts until I got to the relatively straight portion right near the bottom. Then I let it rip and worked it up to a max speed of 42.8 MPH.

Whew! Fun though. Even the ride up was fun. Next year I'll know I can hit it a bit harder. And this has me excited to work on climbing through the fall and preparing for the Lyle Pearson in the spring. Imagine that - actually preparing for the Lyle Pearson. :)

State TT Championships

Well I've had more than 24 hours to stew about this, and I'm disappointed in my time. But I shouldn't be, really; but I am. So I'm disappointed in myself for being disappointed in myself. It's a positive feedback loop and I'm spiraling into a bad place. Screw it - I'm going to get my first beer in weeks. Hang on . . . Okay I'm beered. Thanks Teresa. Tack on a minute to my time at the Bogus Basin Hill Climb this weekend (speaking of positive feedback loops).

Anyway, here's how it went down: I got there knowing I'd have some trouble. Never done a 40K time trial before, so I didn't really know how much I could put into it and still have enough left to finish. So I had my sights set ridiculously low. And I got to the start line in plenty of time. Chatted for a minute with Scott Hoover, a TT veteran and friend from the Hubbard TTs, and I mentioned that this was gonna be my first 40K TT. He said something akin to, "It's not much different than the 10-milers - same effort, just longer." Note that he'd already completed his TT for the day - the 20K ride for the Masters 50+ category. I'll punch that guy right in the nose next time I see him! :)

So okay, I took his advice to heart and kept about the same pace I do during Hubbard. Surprisingly, I was just about able to maintain that pace through the whole ride - I died a little near the end. And the worst part was when I was coming up on an intersection, cars were waiting for me at the stop signs and another car or two was driving opposite my direction. Just then with four or five cars' worth of people watching me, a Cat 3 cruises past me effortlessly. Great. Thanks for that gigantic slice of humble pie. :)

A couple miles after that, I crossed the finish line and rode straight to my truck. It was only after I sat there stretching for a minute or two that I thought to look at the time on my phone. I started at 8:54 (by the officials' time) and looked at my clock at 10:07. Estimating about 6 minutes since I crossed the finish line, I figured my time was somewhere near 1:07:00. "That'd be damn sweet if it's accurate!" I thought. Then I overheard other guys talking about their 55-minute times. Ugh. Well I was pretty much right on; 1:07:19 was my official time - two seconds faster than the last-place finisher in my category. I was 8th of 9. I'll save you the math - that's 22.2 MPH.

Then I called Kate & told her that I was finished. "Did you have fun?" she asked not 20 minutes after the worst suffering I'd endured in years, possibly ever, and certainly the most intense physical effort I've ever put forth. I laughed heartily and shouted "NO!" :)

Mostly out of frustration, last night I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on sketchy estimates on a website to determine about how much an aero helmet may have helped me, and I figured it could have shaved three and a half minutes off my time. That woulda been okay by me. $120+ for three minutes once a year though . . . yeesh!

Registered for the State Time Trial Championships

One must question my mental capacity right about now. I just registered for the Idaho State Time Trial Championships (there I am). That by itself isn't enough to qualify me for the loony bin, but the fact that this is a 40km time trial . . . now that's nuts: 25 miles of all-out effort. I've never even spent that much time on my TT bike. My longest ride on it was my very first - 14.5 miles. And of course I was just getting used to it so I put no real effort into that. I have no idea how hard I should go out on this thing in order to have enough left to finish it. But it should be . . . fun? :)

Hubbard TT

There were additional expectations on me this week: I promised McT that I'd throw it in one higher gear on the home stretch this week and churn extra hard if he'd do one more set of something in the gym. It's good to have a friend there to motivate you to push yourself. Gatlin has officially filled that role recently, and quite well if I may say so (and I may - it's my damn blog); but McT's dedication to the sport of bodybuilding has been an inspiration to me for . . . well geez, since high school. Senior year - while changing back into our uniforms in the locker room after gym class was the first time that anyone noticed his physique (to my knowledge). Between taking his gym shirt off and replacing it with his dress shirt, I noticed his muscle definition and said something like, "Damn! McT's ripped!" This was not at all expected from the mild-mannered kid. All five or six guys in our locker row and a few guys from the next one turned to look. Several guys expressed how impressed they were. I think someone might have even encouraged him to flex. :) Anyway there's that. On to the time trial...

Last week was a week for records to be set. The wind changed right near the turnaround so we had a very weak headwind for most of the way out but a wild tailwind on the way back. I felt like I was shot out of a cannon after the turn. This week wasn't quite so great - we had a bit of a barnburner on the way out but it stuck with us for strong headwind on the return. I did indeed upshift (two gears in fact) and put in a big helping of extra effort, working well into my red zone for pain over the last couple hundred meters. However my time suffered due to the wind as well as my lack of concentration and consequent poor aerodynamic form and suboptimal pedaling. 25:05 this week. Not bad for me, but I couldn't help but hope for another improved time.

But the silver lining of my lack of improvement is that I think that this is an indication that I've found my baseline. Or I've hit my first plateau. The uber-easy improvement is over - I'm no longer a novice. From now on, improvements in my time will be harder earned, come in smaller increments, but feel more significant.

There was a dude taking pictures there today. Hopefully he got some of me - especially the one of me crossing the finish line with "AGONY" printed in big bold letters across my face.

Sub 25

Well it was another day for the Hubbard time trial. Gatlin & I were both feeling beat down after the race this past weekend and practicing earlier in the week (plus Gat works outside in this crazy heat), so we weren't really expecting anything too impressive.

But Gatlin got to put his new bike to the test again - his first TT with it, so a first opportunity to semi-quantitatively assess how much it's benefitted him. They just put the aero bars on this afternoon, and the altered cable routing caused some brake tuning issues resulting in his front brake rubbing the rim. Despite this gigantic energy sink and his fatigue (whether real or perceived), Gatlin clocked an improved time from his previous - right around 26 minutes flat. That's about half a minute or so faster than his previous best, I believe. So great work Gatlin! Woulda been interesting if we could have compared your time as-is with one sans-brake-issue, but I bet (based on nothing quantitative [grin]) that it cost you a good 20 seconds.

I also improved my time significantly: 24:49 according to Mike's stopwatch. That's my first ever sub-25-minute ten mile TT. A bit more impressive than the 30 minutes from this spring. :)

Citizens' Crit

Well today was the day - the Idaho State Criterium Championships. Gatlin & I signed up for the citizens' race - the race for people who haven't raced before. Technically I'd raced before - a time trial, but I felt this was the better place for us to be since neither of us had ever done a crit. Crits are tight and technical, and I ride loose & squirrelly.

Last year's citizens' race (I showed up to watch last year) had only about seven or eight racers, half of whom were sitting on mountain bikes. So I figured that Gat & I'd be pretty much alone on the course or with one or two others. But when we rolled up to the line, we rolled up alongside ten or twelve other riders, all on road bikes and all looking fairly fit. Yikes.

Off we went with Gatlin's parents, Mike (photographer of choice for Dan's Folly) & Connie (who said she was gonna blame me if Gatlin crashed - mind you, she tells me this not before registration but ten minutes before the race starts), in attendance. Gat & I pulled up front right off and traded a couple pulls with one other rider. The photo shows Gat (Navy jersey) pulling with me behind him. After about half the race, he & I'd done the lion's share of the work for everyone who was still hanging onto us - five or six people I guess (but I can't say for sure since I was always near the front). Come to think of it, I kinda tucked right in behind people rather than letting more than one or two riders in the paceline get by me. So maybe it was my fault that no one else did any work.

At some point in there, Gatlin hit a pebble or something with his back tire and skidded out a bit. He modulated the brakes perfectly and made a phenomenal recovery. Then I heard Connie's heart start beating again.

Anyway after about half the race was behind us, one guy shot past everyone and I decided the race was too short (20 minutes) to let a break get too far ahead so I pulled out of the paceline and went after him. Caught him in short order too. I figured Gat was still on my wheel but I looked back & he wasn't. Drat. Well that just blew our agreement to stay together. Sorry Gatlin. And of course the dude that shot out decided against his break after just half a lap and slowed back down to 19-20 from the 24-25-MPH pace he'd just set. So I passed him and kept on going. From there, I think I held the lead pretty much the whole way.

And miraculously I hung in at the front all the way to the end. I won the razzle frazzle thing. Gatlin held on for a very respectable fourth. On the way home afterwards though, I recalled that he told me he'd only eaten half a bowl of cereal for breakfast. That couldn't have been enough. With a proper amount of fuel (and without the need to expend extra energy on that recovery), I bet he'd have hung right in there.

But now I've begun to second guess my decision to register in the citizens' race instead of Cat 4/5 (beginners). I figured that Cat4/5 guys would be a bit more aggressive and a bit more under control, and that my inexperience would only have caused problems. However I'm beginning to think that maybe I could have hung with the cat 4/5 riders (at the BACK). I felt about as under control as they looked (we stuck around to watch them immediately after us). If we'd have absolutely run away with the citizens' race, I might have convinced myself that I/we shoulda moved up. But as it was, I only won by a couple seconds at most.

Anyway there you have it. I won a race. You likely won't hear that ever ever again. :) Regardless, it was really fun; and I've been told that the brand new Buick I won is in the mail. :) But I need to thank Gatlin for entering with me. I'd almost certainly have decided against entering again if not for his willingness to come along and to practice with me ahead of time. And to share pulls. :)

Preparing for the Idaho State Criterium Championships

Gatlin & I are preparing to race in a criterium this weekend. Pretty scary - close quarters racing for the first time for me. Not something I'm comfortable with at all, but the field is gonna be ridiculously small and I'll be on the course with only a few others. The bad news is that we'll all be equally underexperienced so staying out of each others' way might be a challenge (until Gat & I put the hammer down and leave all the chumps behind for good).

Gat & I spent Tuesday night practicing. There's your silver lining to the "economic downturn" and "housing crisis." Crits are run on short loops - kinda like the NASCAR or Formula 1 of bike racing. Perfect for practice crits are abandoned subdivisions where they paved all the roads then realized they couldn't sell any houses so didn't build any. And places like that are a dime a dozen around here nowadays. Sweet. No houses = no one entering/exiting the sub = no traffic + ease in seeing around corners just in case; and new construction = new pavement = smooth riding.

So Gat & I raced three short crit races, three laps apiece on a 0.6-mile loop. I won two and he won the last one - I was completely out of gas by that point and Gatlin swept right past me before the last turn. I knew he was gonna make his move there, but I hadn't even the energy to get off my saddle much less to answer his charge. We both maxed out above 31 MPH on level ground. It was unbelievably fun. We almost surely won't hit 31 in the race on Sunday (it'll be longer - ~20 minutes, so we'll hafta conserve more energy), but it should be just as fun. Gatlin's got an edge on me because he ran track in high school so he's more experienced in the whole strategizing thing, which is a giant part of crits (though I did learn a bit from him).

So I'm quite jazzed. I've been grinning like a chimpanzee thinking about it ever since we decided to do it.

Cartwrong

Well I'm off to a wedding in a couple days, so I'll be away from the bike for a while. I came to that realization today and decided to push myself on the way home. So I decided on Cartwright Road. Never even driven it before, but I've heard about it and Google Maps has a terrain map that clearly shows some pretty beefy hills so I knew what I was getting myself into . . . more or less.

Good grief. I was already a bit fatigued after a fairly climb-intensive workout with Gatlin this weekend (When he reads this he'll call me a baby but that's only because he's a punk.), so I knew I wasn't gonna win any races; but I wanted to push myself. And boy howdy did I! Probably the steepest stuff I've ever ridden. By the time I got to the top of the second climb (about 540 feet over 1.3 miles - ~8%), I was gasping for breath and my legs felt like Jell-O. Pulled off right at the top for a couple minutes' rest.

The other interesting part of this ride was Dry Creek Rd, a little further along. I knew when I planned the route that it was a rough gravel road, but I figured it was time for a Roubaix (a road bicycle race including a significant portion of cobblestone and/or gravel roads). Geez, the washboard was terrible. I have a headache now just thinking about it. The loose sand & gravel would have been tolerable . . . downright enjoyable even if not for that.

Anyway it was a good experience (topped off with a planned stop at my boss's house to refill my water bottles), and I'm glad that I'll have a few days to recover.

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.