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.