The Dignity of Commuting By Bicycle + Pre Leadville Epic #2

THE DIGNITY OF COMMUTING BY BICYCLE #1
First off, keeping a blog is way easier than keeping a pet or a drug habit. It turns out that you only need feed it once a month or so. I'm sure all the real writers out their feel differently about it, I imagine Hemingway needed to write like Van Gogh needed to paint. I like to think thats how riding a bike is for me. I know that I sure get cranky when I don't get to pedal, and if I didn't pedal to work several times a week, I might not get to pedal at all. Thebike snob loves to bitch about his commute, but when I see all the sorry sap suckers in their stupid cars, I have to gloat. Who can complain about this:

Forgive my photographic skills, I'm still honing my in-situ abilities. But as you can see, it's not quite freeway. That is horse pasture fence however, and I make a real effort to say a personal hello to the equines every day. While a true back road wouldn't even have a yellow line, I'm a hell of a lot better off than these folks:

Note the line of cars goes all the way around the corner. In fact, this particular bit of traffic extends for at least 2 miles. That picture was taken no later than 7 A.M., before rush hour even gets started. The good news is that most of the cars are going the opposite direction, towards Washington, D.C. The bad news is that I'm headed for a sweet 12% grade. It's only 500' long, but more than enough to get your heart rate up.

The other morning I saw a fox bounding through waist high grass, then spooked two buck white tails still in velvet on my morning commute. No XM radio though...

PRE-LEADVILLE EPIC #2

This past weekend I entered in the 12 hours of cranky monkey which just so happens to occur on Marine Corp. Base Quantico. Looking forward to the 100 miles of Leadville, I've been training and felt I was in pretty good shape. I've never really wanted to make the podium in a race before. It's always been about doing my best, leaving it all on the course, and finishing in the middle of the pack with a big smile on my face.

This time, I wanted blood.

Even if it was my own, as long as it was mingled with the #3 racer, I wanted to WIN.

My goal at the beginning of the day was 10 laps. The course was 10.something miles, 10 laps meant a leadville equivalent. Doing the calculation, I needed to keep a 10mph average and take no breaks.

As my partner King of PNP's girlfriend will tell you; I get super nervous on race day. I can't sleep the night before, I show up 2 hours early for everything, I can't decide whether to cry or puke. So when the race finally starts, I'm mostly relieved. This race started with a looong 3/4 mile LeMans style run:

Thats my phat ass in the baby blue drunkcyclist jersey. I consider that jersey a talisman, a charm to ward off all the pain that a 12 hour mountain bike race brings. Too bad it didn't work for shit; that race hurt worse than anything I've done in my entire life. And I was in the Marines, Damnit!

My 10 lap goal gradually went out the window. By 2 in the afternoon, there were more people walking their bikes than actually riding them. 94F with 50% humidity, like riding your bike in a steam room. The hills were soul smashingly steep, the kind that teach people about congenital heart defects. 9 laps later I was thanking my lucky charms I didn't have to go for 10.

The good news is, my pain was the fifth worst of all the solo bastards out there. Considering there were 55, I can suffer with the best of 'em. Now if we can just get big jonny to print some more jerseys, I can have a clean one to wear on (or next to) the podium.



Notice that I'm the only one still sweating. The sweating didn't stop until after midnight. And just as a reference point, I drank a nearly a full camel-bak each lap.
1 camel-bak = 100 oz
100oz = 0.78 gallons/lap
I did 9 laps, but since I didn't drink a full camel-bak each lap, conservatively:
8laps*100oz = 6.25 gallons!
I took a piss 3 times, and not much came out.
How long did all this take?

Yeah bitches!
See you in Leadville.
P

Leadville Training Epic I

Course: Boise-Idaho City-Boise (includes dirt and paved roads, single-track, unmaintained fire roads)
Distance: ~100 miles
Ride Time: 9 hours 10 minutes (plus ~1 hour of breaks)
Elevation Gained: ~ 12,000' (conservative estimate)
Mechanicals: Infinity (includes multiple dropped chains, bent chain link, loose cassette lock-ring)
Temperature: 101 F (in Boise)
Naked People Seen: 1 (male, camping alone near Clear Creek Rd)

http://www.cycleidaho.com/Tour/maps/map.pdf

Leadville Looming

According to my calculations, there are 60 days till the Leadville trail 100. Should be a piece of cake. I rode my bike, like, a bunch of times already this season. And some of those times were on trails! This doesn't even count all the bike rides around town and to "work". Back that up with my plan to stop smoking a few days before the race, and things are really looking up! I'm totally not freaking out or anything. In fact, there is almost no evidence whatsoever that I've been curled up on the floor, crying like an infant for the past 3 days, muttering about 12,000 feet of vertical and pulmonary edema.

Has anyone seen my blanky?

NoVA Knows Karate

I've never seen so many karate studios as right here in Centreville, Virginia. Not that the problem is limited to my immediate surroundings, every little town is littered with sensais in search of students. And if you suspect I mean "continuous town that they change the name of once in a while" by little town, you're correct.

At first I thought it was a by product of the Korean concentration in my little piece of NoVA that spawned all these dojos. I learned not long ago that the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, is from my neighborhood. His parents apparently still live here. Crying in their beer in a dark living room, I'm sure, even a Caucasian family would be disgraced by that guy. In his defense, he killed a lot more people than those idiots at Columbine. I was in the Marines at the time of that one, all we could talk about was how poor a job they did, over 150 rounds fired and only 12 dead.

But what good is having all these hardened karate masters roaming the streets? Bands of martial artists that demand your wallet, or I'll break this board man!? Vigilantes keeping the itinerant Mexicans in line? Those dudes don't want no trouble! They're here on a wing and a prayer as is, give 'em a steady job and phone call home once in a while and you won't hear another peep. Maybe Tae Kwon Do takes the place of soccer in this environment, though I thought that lacrosse (LaX to the hip) and baseball were the big letterman sports round here.
There's no shortage of 4' tall women driving SUV's, they must be taking the young'uns somewhere. At least they won't be driving Hummers for much longer.

In the randomness department, that link reminded me how much I love the Washington Post. I tell The Baroness all the time, the subscription she got me is the best gift ever. Even better than 101 Nights of Romance. Hard to believe, but I swear it's true.

I managed to ride my bike nearly 200 miles last week, culminating in Saturdays epic 103 miles at 18.3 average. Including ~3000 vertical in and around Shenendoah National Park. Shenendoah is a long narrow ridge of mountains that runs North/South near the Virginia/West Virginia border. The national park service, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to put a paved road along the top of the ridge for the entirety of it's hundred mile length. If I'm truly ready for Leadville, I should be able to ride the entire length of Skyline drive, both ways, in a single day. Heres to goals. Fuck Karate, here's to cycling.

What does it all mean?

You can take the boy out of the west, but you can't take the west out of the boy. Hopefully I'll find the time and energy to post some musings on some of the obvious, and more subtle, differences between Boise mother fucking Idaho and Washington DC.