Friday, January 28, 2011

spring training in decorah 2011

its happening again. ive got another std that i wanna share. march 26-27. 100 miles of gravel on saturday followed by beers and food then 100 kilometers of gravels on sunday. more info about routes and other randomness to follow.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

the stars are aligning...

fucking ecstatic. just noticed transiowa and decorah time trials are not on the same weekend. doing a happy dance. happy sock not necessary but happy dancing nonetheless.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

wind ride

spent the late morning chasing novian up and around bluffton. holy f-ing windy. riding a fairly easy gear and was still standing to pedal into the wind in the flats. he was of course riding effortlessly. thinking the training plan is gonna involve chasing novian and a pack of rabid roadies on geared cross machines on my ss graveljabber until i'm cross-eyed and dizzy a couple times a week. i'm really excited. i swear. relatively happy with how the legs felt following sunday's race although my climbing legs would have failed quickly had we ridden much longer. considering picking up some compression tights to sleep in...any feedback/recommendations?

side note...THIS is worth reading...still amazed by colin's sense of humor.

Monday, January 17, 2011

triple d 2011

started out thinking this year was gonna be a mountain bike year, ended up thrilled to be racing it for the first time on a pugsley. no expectations going into it so very happy with 3rd place overall. drew was in 4th, 1st on a "skinny bike" and i'm pretty sure he would've ridden away from me on a pugsley the way lance (2nd overall) and drew's friend (overall winner) did. fairly "fast" conditions, finished in around six and a half hours. was completely wrecked after because the conditions made you want to try to ride so fast. great race again and a good time with the fam celebrating nephew's 1st birthday in the waterpark. some pics...
pre-race
gathering
the eventual top 4 rolling out from the start (l to r: drew, lance, me; drew's buddy back left)
halfway, chad's pizza in dyersville
rolling into durango checkpoint and hurting
finish line and sweet ice beard

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

new year...

new bike, newish blog, new perspective (maybe) and a lot of the same old shit. quick update on the stable: currently own a surly pugsley which i ride the shit out of, a vassago jabberwocky built up as my long distance gravel weapon, an uber-pimp trek superfly i have yet to ride and an azonic steelhead which lives on through the miraculous powers of welding although my knee isn't allowing it to be ridden much. didn't write much after the knee injury last year cause i didn't feel much like writing about my struggles to get back into what i considered adequate shape. those struggles were as much mental as they were physical. i just had a really tough time getting back into training. right now im in a decent upswing that i'm cautiously optimistic will hold and get me ready for transiowa. been working a lot at the bar which limits my time to ride with other local hooligans but have been doing a fair job of enjoying riding in good balance with training (by good balance i mean far more enjoyable rides than training rides). i'm not in the shape i once was...i'm not sure if i ever will be but i'm getting back into something that resembles a shape i'm content with.
new year's day ride went down again. as did most of the riders. jesse's hamburger knee was self-induced but some of the other crashes were a result of a lot of ice and a little alcohol. although i'm sure i have that backward. as usual it was probably the best ride of the year and everything is downhill from there, which is awesome considering it was only the first day of the year.
next up for me on the calendar is triple d. certainly not going into expecting to reclaim my title but excited to race it for the first time on a pugsley in what is the race's and my 4th installment. after triple d i'll be "training" for the pugsley world championships we're throwing here in decorah. i think training will require spending as much time as possible in a bar with jesse rather than actually trianing on the bike. after that i'm hoping to "organize" another std this year which will probably just be a super shitty weather gravel century, most likely the same century as last year's std. other than that it'll be a whole lot of getting ready for transiowa and mixing in enough trail riding to justify the superfly purchase and to be ready to race xc after the royal 162.
yep...after 4 months of not writing that's about all i got. happy adam?