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? :)