AgentScotty

I just saw that in the news, and the first thing I thought of was "I bet a few peeps on TRF will get a kick out of that..." :)

Not much riding for me this year: I've had a few overtime death marches at work (188 hours total, effectively an extra 4.7 weeks of work that I would've rather spent in the saddle :) ), and I think my new BP med (ACE inhibitor + diuretic) is screwing up my hydration/electrolytes. My legs are cramping up around 20-30 miles despite pounding the Gatorade and shoveling down Gu's equivalent of Shot Bloks. My longest ride this year is only 58 miles, so I haven't even done a metric, let alone a full century.

 

Today got over 90 degrees in my neck of the woods (I wasn't sure if it would get that hot again in 2013) and I was able to get in close to 32 miles. I really enjoyed the first 5 miles, but was ready to call a taxi by mile 10. The mixture of hot humid air and ragweed pollen wasn't the easiest stuff to breathe. :)

 

At only 1037 miles so far, this year will likely beat out my current Hall of Shame of only 1741 miles in 2009. I've missed a number of rides that I've done every year for the last three years.

 

The Tri-State Century (MA-NH-ME) is coming up in a few weeks, and it's broken 90 degrees 2 of the last 3 years, making the cold Atlantic feel pretty good at the end of the ride. :)

Tough start on the year for me: For the first time in 3 years, I missed the Spring Century last week, and it looks like I'll miss the Kings Tour of the Quabbin in a few weeks. I'm having trouble getting the 30 mile rides done, let alone the 62-100-124 mile rides.

 

Oh well, it looks like summer is finally here.

It looks like the Groundhog was full of road apples this year. :boo hiss: I thought we had 2 more weeks of winter, but it's 4 and counting, with snow just about every week. :boo hiss:

 

I only made it out twice so far all February. I did 14 miles last Tuesday and 16 miles today, with 133 total for the year.

 

Oh well, the days are getting longer, and Daylight Savings will be back soon. I'm really looking forward to kicking off 2013 with a lot of miles. Once it stops snowing, at any rate. :)

I'm not sure when I voted, but I deleted and revoted just in case. In another year I'll have to do that again.

I got robbed today: I woke up around 10:30 and it was 55 degrees out. I figured I could take my time waking up and getting to the store to buy Gatorade, and get in a reasonably warm 62-75 miles from noon to 5.

 

By noontime it had dropped below 50, then the clouds moved in. 20% chance of rain with a forecast of 30 degrees by sunset.

 

By 3pm the sun came back out and the temperature climbed from 40 to 45, and I went and did 23.5 miles. Very clear and sunny, but very windy towards the end, with the temperature around 37 degrees at the end. An hour later and my fingers are still tingling.

:cheers:

 

Looks like a gorgeous start. How warm did it get?

 

We had a lot of heavy humidity and rain in 2012 (outright rain on 2 or 3 of the centuries I did), and I can't remember starting a century on a morning that looked like that in quite awhile.

 

After a wet and crappy weekend it was really nice today, sunny, dry, and in the mid-50s. Unfortunately work got in the way and I only had time for 30 miles.

I hear that line all the time on WAAF's Hill-Man Morning Show.

20 miles today, longest ride of the new year.

 

As it was in the low 40s at the start of the ride, I was able to go lighter on the cold weather gear. I don't know why, but it seems like every piece of cold weather gear I put on knocks 0.25-0.5 MPH off my average speed. I left two of the heavier pieces off today, and rode a good 1-1.5 avg MPH faster.

 

By the time I made it out to the back roads the sun had nearly set, but I tried to get a picture at 16-18 MPH anyways.

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img10/8522/0110131632.th.jpg

30 degrees won't be a lot of fun, but 56 sounds pretty pleasant for January.

 

Hopefully it will warm up quickly enough to tough it out the first hour or two and leave the heavy cold weather gear at home, or that they let you drop excess gear at the rest stops to pick up at the end of the ride.

 

Have a good ride. :sundog:

 

I didn't ride today, but I rode the two days before that. It's warmer now at 930pm than it was at 3pm earlier today. If the warming trend continues into tomorrow, I'll definitely ride tomorrow afternoon after work.

 

I got a written warning today for aggressive passing/lane changing (yeah, I deserved it) which is really making me think about bicycling to/from work once the overnight lows get above 40 degrees. 4 hours of cycling a day will be tough, but probably preferable to enduring 2-3 hours of Boston Metro traffic.

$30K bikes, skin suits, wind tunnel testing, etc, makes it all kinda artificial to me.

 

Though I did laugh my backside off in the late 1990s when the chain on Bjarne Riis' $30K bike jammed up and he threw the bike in the ditch while all the cameras were rolling.

 

The thing that sucks for me is that I started watching the tail end of the 1995 Tour, then watched every Tour in its entirety from 1996 to 2006. Miguel Indurain winning the 1995 Tour was probably the only clean win I ever watched (though I didn't know it at the time), and kinda wish I could have all those hours and years back.

 

Back then I was naive enough to believe that Bjarne Riis had the Tour of his lifetime when he dethroned Miguel Indurain in 1996, when really he was doped to the gills. :(

 

Oh well, doping didn't kill my interest in cycling (I've probably cycled more in the last 3 years than in all the years before) but I don't know if I'll ever bother watching professional cycling again. Lance is just the latest in a long line, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if his interview with Oprah ends up in the ratings craphouse for whatever night it airs.

I did a short 14.3 mile ride today, starting at 30 degrees and finishing at 26 degrees. My fingers were hurting the first 8 miles or so. I've definitely got to get some better gloves/mittens.

 

The days are slowly getting longer (it's dark at 4:50 instead of 4:20 now) and it's supposed to break 40 degrees the next 3 days. :sundog: Even if I finish in the dark, I'm hoping to bag some 20-25 mile rides after work the next few days.

Those wintertime (for me, anyways) centuries sound awesome. If I had enough money to fly me and my bike around the country, I'd be there.

 

The biggest factor that keeps me indoors during the winter is cold feet, so I used some of my Christmas bonus on new pedals, shoes, and booties today. On a 28-32 degree ride, my fingers were a little cold and I thought I'd gotten frostbite on my unmentionables, but my feet stayed warm the whole time.

 

Next on the list will be warmer pants and lobster gloves, and maybe a helmet cover and a heavier balaclava.

 

Have fun on the Stagecoach and "Loop the Lake" centuries. :sundog:

It's nice to see there's nice biking weather somewhere. :)

 

It's been mostly in the 30s-40s here the last few weeks, with an occasional 50+ rainy day. It looks like I'll have to get some fenders and raingear if I'm going to ride at all.

 

I put in 4422 miles so far this year, my second-best ever, but a far cry from last year's 6389 miles.

I'm still managing to bag a ride here and there.

 

This past Monday was forecast nearly a week in advance to break 70 degrees, so I put in a request last week to leave early. It didn't get quite that warm (more like 66-68 degrees) but I was able to get out of work just past noontime, get on the road before 2pm, and bag 63.5 miles (102 kilometers). As the sun goes down by 4:45 now that Daylight Savings is over, I was still on the road an hour or so after sunset.

 

The days will keep getting shorter for another 5 weeks, but then they'll start getting longer.

:bump:

 

Bumping to see how the new board works...

 

:bump:

I did close to 56 miles last Friday after work when it was in the mid-high 70s (but ended up finishing in the dark in the low 60s), took Saturday as a rest day, but then wimped out on Sunday and Monday due to the cold, so you went an hour farther in the cold than I did.

 

I'm not ready for it to be this cold out and it's still a long way down to the winter lows that will be here soon enough.

 

Cold fingers, toes, and nose/ears/face take me out of the ride the fastest. It's not been cold enough to put on the balaclava yet, but I've used the booties once or twice, and the long-fingered gloves several times.

I like the taste of Moxie when it first hits my tongue, but then the asslike aftertaste kicks in...

QUOTE (iluvgeddy05 @ Sep 24 2012, 09:22 AM)

That's scary! Hope you heal quick...

QUOTE (umoveme @ Sep 24 2012, 05:43 PM)

QUOTE (ILSnwdog @ Sep 24 2012, 11:34 AM) I love pop.  I drink Squirt, Sun Drop, and Mountain Dew the most.  If I drink a cola, I prefer Coke. I'm also a root beer aficionado. I used to drink a ton of pop, but now I drink unsweetened ice tea and I try and limit myself to 1 or 2 cans a day. "Pop"   Really?   I knew "Pop vs Soda" would come up eventually.   http://www.popvssoda.com/   I'm glad to see it's not just us New Englanders that call it "Soda".   Pepsi is generally my soda of choice. I really like Cherry Pepsi and Cherry Coke, but they're usually expensive enough that I just stick with regular Pepsi.   I've tried to cut down over the years, but quitting soda has been harder for me than quitting cigarettes. Usually the best I can manage is to leave a case in my cubicle at work and drink 2-4 during the workday. If I keep any at home, I'll drink another 2-4 more after work, plus have 1 during the long commute the next morning.

Congrats on your first c, iluvgeddy05.

 

I had what was probably the most serious crash I've ever had today: My chain skipped as I got out of the saddle for a climb, the bike lurched side to side as I attempted to regain control, the rider tailgating me hit my back wheel, and I went down hard, mostly on my left hip then the back of my head. The back of the helmet got smashed up pretty good, but it did its job. None of the riders tailgating me went down.

 

Later, when I got home and looked at my helmet under better light, I saw I also hit on the left temple and upper forehead, but the helmet took those hits for me as well.

 

If this happened back in 2001 or earlier when I wasn't wearing a helmet, I'd probably be in intensive care or pushing daisies right now.

 

I have to get a new helmet tomorrow, and will also have to retape the left handlebar and replace the little "Shimano 105 Flightdeck" covers on the ends of both brifters, but it beats the heck out of being worm food.

 

Until seeing a bad crash last year, I used to leave the chinstrap on my helmet on the loose side, but have been wearing it tighter ever since. It looks like that paid off for me today, as the helmet took 3 hits and stayed in place.

 

Oh well, today was only my fourth ride for September, but also my third century for September (yeah, I finished the ride, damaged helmet, bruised hip, and all), and I'll probably be riding another century next weekend.

 

I have six centuries and one 200k for 2012, versus the ten centuries I had for 2011. I'm still short of 4000 miles for the year, which I had by mid-July in 2011. Even in 2011 I was aware that 2011 might be my best year ever, so I haven't been pushing myself too hard to match or beat it.

I put in for today off as soon as I read it would break 65 degrees (it actually hit 71 at the high point) and I did my first Metric of the year, just short of 66 miles / 106 kilometers.

 

It was really windy and I flatted around the 20 mile mark (slashed sidewall, luckily I had a tire patch in my seat bag or I would've been walking home) but it was a great day to be on the road, and the first day in longer than I can remember that I didn't need cold weather gear.

 

It's supposed to drop back into the 40s on Friday and the 30s on Saturday, but after that it's supposed to be 57 degrees or warmer every day for a week straight. We also go back on Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, which will be an extra 14-16 miles added to every after-work ride.

QUOTE (Gompers @ Feb 17 2012, 07:11 AM)

I just visited for the first time. It says I have been permanently banned. Great site.

QUOTE (ReGorLaTroy @ Feb 14 2012, 04:58 PM)

I'm fatter than Jan Ulrich in an early spring classic.

We've been let off pretty lightly in the snow department in New England this winter, but it's still been pretty cold from a bicycling standpoint, but warmer than last winter. No frozen water bottles so far.

 

The days are gradually getting longer, and I've been making it out at least a few days a week. Gorgeous sunsets and a lot of deer out in the fields.

 

Just another month until we're back on Daylight Savings Time, which will make it a lot easier to get in rides after work.