The night before

Well, as I type out this on the hotel computer the hourly forecast says hi of about 6 degrees, low of -18ish.  Snow should be good, not great for this non "fat bike" rider.  Starts at 7am tomorrow (-18 at start).  You might be able to find live results on the Arrowhead blog.  Click the link on previous post and then the blog link.

 

Wish me luck.  Just looking to finish this bad boy.

 

BTW.

Leaving

Not sure if they will have updates during the race, but here is where you would look.   http://www.arrowheadultra.com/ 

You may have to check their blog.  Race starts on Monday at 7am.  I am leaving now with J-No.

I am in a hurry, gotta go. 

BTW

Hmph.

I don't know what to think. It is weird. Arrowhead is in 8 days. Weather looks like cold, but not super cold, and that will change a couple of times. You can't be die hard focused on events all year, and I feel like took this one at a step back. I don't know. Riding on snowmobile trails for around 24-30ish hours? I like to race what I enjoy riding. Not sure I love to ride snowmobile trails. Give me LaCrosse, Levis/Trow, Cable Classic, and such. The thing I truly am excited for is the fact the fitness should have a big head start this year for those races mentioned before.

Yeah, I know. I sound like that guy who is all depressed and is expressing it through the keyboard. No, just not super pumped. Pumped, just not super pumped. Lately, I've been thinking more about racing Ragnarok lately than Arrowhead (Ragnarok is a super cool course, and the next race on my agenda).

That being said, if the legs are there and it works out I hope to make a mark on this edition of the race.

Click the pic.

An update, act like you care.

Hmmm, 5 hours with J-No on trails today at roughly 20 degrees. Ran into JP, Eric A, and Scott M while we were out. Got to see 7 sleds drag race by us (literally) on The Real Lake Shady. Nutrition was dialed, making me happy. Made some needed changes to the Gary Fisher Rig which improves things dramatically, making me happy. Had an aha moment in regards to clothing for Arrowhead, yes, making me happy.

Maybe a pile of hours tomorrow morning on trails, teach cycling in the afternoon, pile of hours Monday, and also Tuesday. The last 2 weeks were not what I wanted and it annoys me. My body has become complacent. Time to show it who the boss is.

If I get around to it tomorrow I will show off my $3 stove/pot/windscreen that I made for Arrowhead. It is light, works awesome, and has character.

Mmmm hmmph. Yes. I agree. You do waste a lot of work time on blogs.

Some quick math

After checking WebMD.com and talking with my gynecologist, I might have THIS in my right eye; causing excessive tearing.

ADD

Only a one hour ride at 10 degrees.

EQUALS
_______________________________________________________


What does that mean? Well, here is another equation to work out.

_______________________________________________________


This race and it's much colder temps.



PLUS


MAY EQUAL


________________________________________________________


Yeah, instead of dealing with my eye freezing shut and the awkwardness of that, or huge stalactites hanging off my face, I may just be a pirate. I don't feel like trying to spend the entire race trying to keep my non-dominant eye functional.

Oh, and I am growing facial hair for warmth, you like? Nothing to impressive as I remember 8th grade classmates with full on face rugs. The wife is not so found of my man hairs.

I am trying to think of my new nickname. McDreamy and McSteamy are taken...

BTW

Cold? Not yet.

So I finished up a ride with J-No this morning. Out the door at 4:45am to be greeted with -15 below temps and a -35 windchill. We rode on snow mobile trails up Douglas, over to Oronoco, across Lake Shady, and to Pine Island via trials by Hwy 52. A stop at Kwik Trip was needed for my partner where the locals were a little in awe, but actually seemed to recognize us from the paper. One guy asked me if it was cold. My answer, not yet. Rode back to Rochester with J-No slowing his pace to match my quickly reducing speed. I guess my workouts this week caught up with my legs.

Got home at 10:30am and was having a hard time with the heatwave of -10 and -24 windchill. Lessons learned, but confidence built. My clothing selection was almost right on, but some small changes with that and other gear should have me set. One piece of gear that did not work in the super cold temps was the camera.

The pictures are from a 4 hour ride earlier this week. It was 4 degrees with a -15 windchill. Rode to Oronoco and had to turn around after almost crossing all of Lake Shady.


JP has a problem with his heterosexuality, so a non-butt shot was in order.



I thought of the Dixie Chicks and their song "Wide Open Spaces" when I was rolling through here. Not that I like those nutjobs, just thought of their song.


Hi my name is.....my name is.....my name is.....ticka ticka, Lake Shady.


On the way back, just thought it looked cool.

BTW

Making the world happy one driver at a time.

Looks like J-No and I are famous. It amazes me that not only did we ride for 7 hours on snowmobile trails, but we blocked traffic on a bridge in LaCrosse, made skiers mad because we rutted out the Douglas trail which has never been intended to be a ski trail, caused headaches on 2nd St in Rochester by riding on a 4 lane city street, and disturbed a man that is insecure about his sexuality because he saw us in our "leotards" while he was driving this summer.

Extreme Ride Club; pissing off the world one grumpy person at a time.

BTW

Extreme Ride Club

Farrow has the DBD rides, I realized J-No and I have always called ours Extreme Ride Club. There is a story, but I can't talk about it, right Maury? This would be ride #5 or so this year.

As alluded to before in the comments area, J-No and I had plans Christmas Eve. I was up at 4am, out the door at 4:30 on the Rig. We proceeded to set tracks in the 3 inches of wet snow left the night before. Up the snowmobile portion of the Douglas trail was slow going. The temp was high which led to squishy snow with rutted out slightly harder snow underneath. My front wheel got kicked around while J-No was able to keep his Puglsey a little more straight. We both would end up tipping over at least once (I forgot the camera).

Gears finally adorned the bike but 1/4 the way through the combination of the worn middle chain ring from last year and packed snow suddenly made chain engagement impossible. The rest of the way would be big ringed. You would expect nothing less, no?

I finished up with 7 hours bike time for the day. A quick nap and it was party time at the folks. Presents, food, and freestyle rapping are all part of the tradition.

Christmas day was presents at our house. Santa had a high opinion of me this year. Let's just say that I am now too good to ride alloy rims on my mountain bike. Blingy. Pictures to come soon.

Hope all is Merry and bright, blah, blah, blah.

Riding

Remember when I used to talk about actually riding my bike? Well, the riding has been spotty as "situations" arise. It seems it is full on now as I hope not to completely embarrass myself at the Arrowhead 135. The Gary Risher Rig and I took the monster wheels for some snow riding.

Heading out for a 4 hour tour this weekend. Yes, I use the clock on the seatpost as a watch. Other than that my "zones" I stayed in could be accurately described as J.F.R.


Mayowood, Mayowood always up to no good. A beaten path made things easier, but lowering the tire pressure did the trick. Took a lap on the recently held microcross course. Was able to ride it without dismounting once. I must be amazing.


Woke up too flipping early so I could be out the door at 4:30am yesterday and be back by 7am. Recent snowfall of 2-3 inches made things more fun. The local road crews heard about my ride and brought out a plow for me to motorpace.


A picture is worth a thousand words, but looks like I only wrote fourteen.

I am not sure if I will be in optimum shape for Arrowhead, but things are looking positive. This has to be the best shape I have ever been in for the time of year that I normally am making belly jelly.

I am hoping to finally get some gears on this thing tonight as I am bogged down in anything harder than smooth flat pavement. Good training though, eh?

Christmas is almost here, get some work done before your day off, o.k.?

Seasonal Singing

Merry Christmas!!



BTW

Don't be that guy.

So this one time in college I went to use the bathroom. There were 4 urinals, one was lower than the others, similar to this picture. The 3 high urinals were being used and the 4th lower one was not. As I prepared to make my way to the vertically challenged depository, I realized someone was in the bathroom before me. He was just standing, waiting. What was he waiting for? One of the high urinals. I gave a guy a look and then went about doing what I came to do.

Don't be the guy that is too good to use the kiddie urinal.

BTW.

So it starts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got a butt load of snow. Finally got to test out the snow wheels on the snowmobile trails. Met up with J-No at 5am Sat for 3 hours of Douglas trail riding. Snow was not ideal, but we did well. One thing I found is that his 26X3.7" tires on 70 mm rims have better float than my 29X2.5 tires on 47mm rims, but not a lot better. It was 7 degrees with a -10 windchill at the start and 9 degrees with a -3 windchill when done. Only taking in 350 calories caught up to me in the last 1/2 hour as I knew it would. I think I do stuff like that to see what my body will tolerate.

Oh, the bike still does not have gears on it so I was pushing some very low rpm's on the trails with my gearing. Legs were begging for lower gears to spin in the last hour.

BTW

PSA

We are in trouble...

The
population of this country is 300 million.


160
million are retired.



That leaves 140 million to do the
work.




There are 85 million in school.




Which leaves 55 million to do the work.





Of this there are 35 million employed by the federal
government.




Leaving 20 million to do the work.




2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied
with killing Osama
Bin-Laden.



Which leaves 17.2
million to do the work.




Take from that total the 15.8
million people who work for state and city
Governments. And that
leaves 1.4 million to do the work.




At any given
time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.



Leaving
1,212,000 to do the work.



Now, there are 1,211,998 people
in prisons.





That leaves just two people to do the
work.





You and me.



And there
you are,



Sitting on your ***,




At your computer, reading jokes..


Nice. Real nice.


Time for you to get back to work.

Help me out here.

I am looking for suggestions for a charity that is most worthy. I have several in mind, but I am partial to helping children who have been dealt a bad card (illness, abused, etc.). This is just the start of a bigger plan I have been thinking of for a long while, so please help me with suggestions.

And since everything needs a funny picture,

BTW.

Sorry Joe.

Mr. Friel,

.....I appreciate you helping my riding structure again this year. Just like the previous years I am upping my "yearly hours". In accordance to your ways, a plan has been set out to not embarrass myself at the Arrowhead 135. Yesterday marks the start of my second week in the base period.
.....This is where I owe you an apology. You see, you want base to be primarily long slow miles following your guideline for hours in a week. Well, I did ride or workout the required number of hours, but they were not all slow. Saturday there was a local "micro" cross race. It sounded fun so I lined up with about 10 other guys to take part in the free race that was only a mile from my house. I figured it would be fun as I was on my Rig all single speeded out and with the big monster snow wheels.
.....The start was relaxed, and I was not there to try to crush people as it was all in fun. There was a whole smattering of people on single speeds, mountain bikes, and such. One local made it out on his Belgium cross bike and skinsuit. A far cry from my bike and 15 year old jersey and tights. We all started out together, but 3 of use pulled away with me in third. My gearing was limited, so most of the course I was just spinning it, enjoying it. Eventually, I pulled into the front and built a gap. I was never attacking, it just seemed that I continued at my same pace while others slowed during the 45 minutes of racing.
.....I know, I know Joe. There should not have been a race according to you, but it was fun. I attached my award above for you to look at. Not being a beer drinker, I let the Wookie take over the duty of polishing this off. I still don't understand the fascination with such things, but I am just one person in this world. A fire was made and a hotdog consumed before riding another 3 hours. Yes, they were slow and steady.

I look forward to working with you more this year. Have a Merry Christmas.

Yours Truly,
Charly

Clean up.

So I added 2 blog links and took 2 away. I figure if you haven't updated in the last 6 months then it is too bad for you. Tom, you're on the edge.

It is Obama's fault.

BTW

Less like the Doughboy

So in the past I would pull the plug on consistent workouts in September or so. I just lost motivation. A lot of that has to do with the fact if I have nothing to be fit for I am not. Well, here it is November still and I have not gone too hog wild on cookies and kept a fair amount of my fitness. I am not in shape to go toe to toe with Ivan Drago, but the Pillsbury Doughboy and I have a lot less in common then we normally do this time of year. I have been hitting the weights a little and my strength is there, no relearning, no post lifting soreness.

Now with Arrowhead in Feb, I start my official "training" earlier then ever, as in today. So, I am starting earlier and the pinch test results are reading record results for November. Neato.

On another note, watched Napoleon Dynamite again with the wife last night. Too many funny lines in that movie. Too many.


My monster bike seems to be going well. I have to throw gears on it here soon and rock out with my derailleur out.

BTW.

Arrow through my head.

You ever get something in your head and you can't stop thinking about it. Researching, planning, replanning? That happens to me too often, and now I am thinking about the Arrowhead to which I am on the roster. I really don't feel like losing digits or dying.

I had a friend ask me if I expected to be in the same shape as I was early this year. It could have been phrased differently as, "Are you going for the win?". Uh, no. The veterans of this race have a huge advantage mentally. They know what to expect. I don't care how good of shape anyone is in, this is not all pedal pedal.

Just trying to get all the gear is a battle in itself. Then it is what to bring for food/water. How to carry all of it. Where to carry it. Gotta make sure it does not freeze. Gotta make sure you don't freeze.

Order this, borrow that. Trying to do it on the cheap because the money tree in the back yard has yet to blossom.

Will my "plump" bike be a poor choice compared to the "fat" bikes?

Well, at least I managed to clean out the gutters. BTW.

I do dumb things.

Not many people consider things I enjoy as smart. For instance, I categorized the 3 races I registered for just this weekend.

Dumb
Raganrok 105. Gravel, 105 miles worth. Self supported.


Dumber
Transiowa. Gravel, 320 miles worth. Self supported.


Dumbest
This race. To date, the hardest event I will have every tried to do.
I have a lot of planning to do, like how to keep all my body parts.


You have a lot of planning to do. Like how to goof off on the internet until lunch without the boss noticing.