Just as I Thought Cycling Was Easy: The Cedar Cross (a.k.a. How not to prepare for a self supported event)

I've been putting off doing this for far too long, probably because I've been too tired to do much writing the last week or so I still don't want to admit how much I failed to live up to my own expectations. 

Back to the beginning - after attending the first annual MLK weekend Berryman ride and discovering how good of a post ride party Team Virtus and the Hoosier Daddies can put on, I immediately signed up for the 100+ mile Cedar Cross, not even worrying that I didn't have a bike that was ideal for the ride.  There was no way the skinny tires on my road bike would be able to handle the gravel, and the 26" wheels on my mountain bike would be way slow with everyone else probably on either 29ers or CX bikes.  I mean, I'd just done 25 miles of Berryman in January and had done 50 miles on the KATY trail in a morning with my mountain bike, and I had 4 road centuries under my belt.  It couldn't be that bad, could it?

Fast forward to March, and I actually bought the CX bike that most people would probably be riding in the race.  While I immediately fell in love with the new bike (and relegated my Schwinn to the rafters in my garage), the brief stint of gravel on the century I did a week and a half before the race made me nervous enough to decide that even wider tires than the 700x33's that came on the bike were necessary.  The CAC and that century also both aggravated my knee that I had bruised in a low speed mountain bike crash at Castlewood last October.  I don't know if what I did at the CAC is really related to the fall at Castlewood (since there was no pain in the 6 months between the two), but it was the same part of the same knee that hurt.  So while I felt I had the base miles in to be successful at the Cedar Cross, doubts were starting to creep into my head.

After researching wider tires, and finding out that the LBS closest to my office only had tires as wide as 700x38's, I found a shop that had the 700x45's that Luke from Team Virtus said he was going to be using.  The day before the race, and an hour before the shop closed for the night (right after Super Kate dropped off her famous chocolate chip cookies), I headed over to it to pick them up.  My plan was to put them on when I got home, then spend some time cleaning up my bike and getting everything ready to go so that I could wake up in the morning and leave, just like I did for the century ride a week earlier.  However, when I got home, everything started heading south.  I pulled in the driveway to discover that my lovely wife had started to clean out the garage.

-I only add the next two paragraphs because I think they started a string of bad luck-

At this point, I'll admit that I'm a bad husband sometimes.  About 2 or 3 times a year (usually depending on how many big snows we get), I get nagged to hose out the garage, and I HATE doing it.  I usually fight it for a good month before I grudgingly drag my butt out there to do it.  This year, since we had 2 months of crazy warm weather in March & April, all of the kids outside toys were cluttering up the garage instead of the basement which made it that much more of a chore.  I haven't been able to park my car in there since mid-March.

Anyway, after earlier in the day in which she told her parents not to clean out their garage in the 90° heat, she was cleaning out our garage, which meant that I would have to take over doing that or keep the kids occupied and out of her hair.  I opted for kid duty.

After the garage was put back in order, I was finally able to put on my new tires.  Unfortunately, when I finally got them on, it was pushing 9:00, and I knew that I needed to get to bed since I had a two hour drive to Jefferson City the next day for a 9AM start.  I didn't have time to do much else in the way of bike maintenance that night, so I decided to set the alarm for 5:00, then wake up and finish preparing for the race.

I actually woke up closer to 5:45 because while I set the alarm on my iPod, I neglected to turn the volume up, so the alarm went off, but it didn't make any noise.  That meant I had to rush around even more to get ready and finally, I was ready to go around 6:30.   The drive to Jefferson City was uneventful, and I managed to get into town right around 8:30, about a half an hour later than I really wanted to.  I made a quick stop at a gas station to get a 2 liter of Sierra Mist and some ice for my water bottles and hydration pack, then crossed over the bridge to the park where we were starting.  I quickly got registered and changed, then got in the group for the pre-race meeting.

Coming into Jefferson City on US 50.

About 9:10, Bob fired up the truck that was going to be the lead out vehicle, and we were off.  I started off in the middle of the pack and I figured that soon enough I would either start passing people or getting passed.  I knew there were some really strong people out there and some others who I could probably hang with no problem.  Not long after we hit gravel though, I starting feeling my water bottle rubbing against my leg.  Uh-oh.  I looked down and the top screw came out of my water bottle cage, so it was flopping around as I was pedaling.  I pulled off and the pack immediately passed me.  Unfortunately, in my haste to pack, I did not have my multi-tool with me, and I had to flag down Luke and Adam who were sweeping the course.  Adam didn't have his multi-tool either, but Luke managed to find his and I unscrewed the other screw and put the cage and water bottle in my jersey pocket.  Great.  More weight on my back to carry around all day.

Once I got packed up, I rode with Luke and Adam for a while, but gradually started to pull away from them.  Eventually I even started to pass a few other riders as we made our way through the edge of Holts Summit towards the first piece of singletrack, which also happened to be the same pasture that I had hiked through during the CAC.  This time though, I didn't see any of the cows that were out there that weekend.  About halfway through the pasture, I saw a pickup truck with a few people hanging out around it.  As I got closer, I realized that one of the people was Todd from the Hoosier Daddies and their team had brought a keg of beer and some bottles of water out to hydrate the riders.  That was a welcome site!  The temperature was climbing pretty rapidly towards 90, and I wasn't about to turn down any cold liquids.  I also was able to give Todd my water bottle cage to take back to the finish line so I could get it out of my jersey.  I hung out there for several minutes while everyone bringing up the back of the race came in, and when we took off, there were about 15 or so of us that formed a pace line through the rest of the singletrack and back onto the gravel.

Refreshments!!

Once we hit gravel again, the pack started to thin out again and I found myself riding with Jim Davis of Team Seagal.  We'd only met maybe once or twice before at some GORC functions, but it was nice killing the miles talking to him.  After a while, we pulled into the first official rest stop, a church that had a water faucet in their yard.  At this point, I combined the Sierra Mist from my water bottles into one and filled up the empty one with some nice cold water.  I also downed the two packs of M&M's I picked up at the gas station in Jefferson City.  There was only 40 miles to the next place I could buy food, it wouldn't be that bad, right?  Not two miles after leaving that church, we were back on the second stretch of singletrack.  With the rain the area had a couple days earlier, this was still pretty muddy, and there was a lot of hike-a-bike through here, so what might've taken 20 minutes if it were dry wound up taking probably closer to an hour.

Creek crossing on the singletrack.

After finally exiting that section, we had about 3 miles on gravel before we crossed over this old bridge only wide enough for pedestrians and started climbing another section of doubletrack.  This was also familiar ground as it was where we exited the singletrack on the biking leg of the CAC.  Unfortunately, it was a lot soggier this time around, and coupled with the narrower tires on my CX bike, it made for a fair amount of hike-a-bike as well.  Fortunately, after we trudged through the muck, the Hoosier Daddies made another appearance with their beverage truck!  At this point (mile 35), we had about 15 miles to the next rest stop where our drop bags were, and 35 miles to the next stop with a convenience store.  While we were done with the singletrack until that rest stop, that also meant that we were going to be riding through a lot more open areas without much in the way of tree cover, so those 15 miles were hot!

Bike & Pedestrian bridge across Cedar Creek

While I was wishing I had more food with me by now, I also thought I was making pretty decent time, and I was still passing the occasional rider that was getting worn out in the heat.  Everything was going all right until I heard a loud POP! and saw my front tire go flat.  While I did have a spare tube and CO2 cartridge, I had also forgotten a CO2 applicator (the downside of having 4 bikes!) in another bike bag.  Fortunately, about this time I had a double stroke of luck.  Another rider named Dave and his wife pulled up about the same time, and Dave helped me air my tire back up while his wife, who was driving the course in a van with their 4 kids, offered to take me back to the start if I wanted.  I was getting to the point where I was thinking about heading back when I got to the rest stop anyway, so I graciously accepted his wife's offer and put my bike in the van and cooled off while we headed back to the park.

When I returned, the Hoosier Daddies were back grilling their famous bratwurst (see MLK Berryman report), so I ate a couple of those and grabbed a couple of the baked potatoes that were promised to all of the riders.  Super Kate's chocolate chip cookies were locked up at this point though, so those would have to wait.  It was getting to be about 3:00 now, so after refueling my body, I chilled out with some of the other people who DNF'ed and we waited for the winners to cross the line.  Just after 4:45 the first group of 4 came across the line.

The Cedar Cross Winners

I continued to hang out at the pavilion for a while, but I was starting to get thirsty for a soda or something like that.  Too much beer and I wouldn't be in any shape to make the two hour drive home.  Caffeine would also be good to keep me awake.  I hopped in my car and headed across the bridge back into Jefferson City, and immediately after getting off the highway, I saw this:

Snow Cones! (US 54 & Missouri Blvd)

It's not soda, but I love snow cones, and when I saw that stand, I had to stop.  I ordered me a strawberry one, and went back to the pavilion to eat it.  After I finished that though, it was after 6:00, so I had to start thinking about heading home.  As much as I wanted to stay until everyone finished, it was looking like I would be there well after 8:00 if I did that, and then I wouldn't be home until after 10:00 (as it turns out, the final group of 4 didn't come in until 11:00).  I decided to say my goodbyes and head out.  So while the ride didn't work out for me very well, Bob put on a really well run event, and I hope to give it another shot next year.  Hopefully, I'll prepare myself a little better next time.

BFC Spring Chicken Ride

Cycling season is definitely gearing up.  It wasn't that long ago that I couldn't wait for all of the organized rides to get started, and now I've got something almost every weekend.  March 25 started it all with the Lost Valley Luau, then I had two free weekends before the first BFC ride out in Wentzville on April 15th.  But after that, the next weekend was the CAC, then 4 days after that I drove out to Jefferson City for a century with the Team Virtus crew (report coming soon!), then 4 days later was the next BFC ride, this time over in St. Libory, IL.  I think my next weekend without some sort of ride isn't until Father's Day!  So while I'm a little bit out of order with these ride reports, I'm hoping to catch up on a few of them before I get so far behind I don't know what happened on what ride.

This was the third time I've done the Spring Chicken ride, and the first two were very much a tale of two rides.  The first time I did it in 2009, it was my second "long" distance ride on my road bike, and I was originally planning on doing the middle route of about 35 miles.  Well, there was a pretty strong wind out of the south that was pushing me down the road at 25 mph to the decision point, and I was feeling pretty good, so I opted for the 45 mile long route and paid the price as soon as I had to deal with a huge crosswind that turned into an awful headwind as I turned to head back to the car.  It was so bad that riders who had finished were coming onto the course to rescue people coming in, and I caught a ride with a nice stranger to save me from the last couple miles.

The ride wasn't on the schedule in 2010, but they brought it back last year, and the weather was beautiful that day.  I had just gotten my bike it's spring tuneup before that ride, which included a professional fitting, so I was hauling a$$ that day.  Being 20 pounds lighter didn't hurt either.  When I had arrived, Amy (the recently departed coordinator of the Bicycle Fun Club rides) had informed me that George had left just a few minutes before me, so I decided to see if I could catch him.  There was a slight wind out of the west, so I was averaging 18 + mph on the early stretches, and while I never caught George on the route (I think I dilly-dallied too long at the first rest stop), I made it back to the car right as he was loading his bike up after averaging about 17 mph over the 45 mile route.  I think this may still be my fastest long ride ever.

This year, it was a rainy weekend (in fact, parts of metro St. Louis had significant hail the day before), and I was obsessively checking the hourly forecast to see if I would be getting wet or not on the ride.  While there was rain in the metro area, the Weather Channel was saying that Washington County would stay dry until about noon, so I headed over there early hoping for another dry ride.  George and I met up just after 8, and headed out on a cool and foggy morning.  This year, the wind was blowing out of the east, so it made the initial leg the tough one.  It was slow going to the first rest stop, and while we had another rider join up with us for a while, I think he wanted to go faster than we were, so he took off before us at the stop.  While I've lost 40 pounds since I started riding, I think my size still puts up a fair amount of resistance when it comes to hills and wind, because both of them still slow me down more than I think they should at times (or maybe I just have a warped sense of reality since George is still 50 pounds lighter than me).

After we chatted with Hank, the driver of the SAG wagon for a bit, we headed off on the next leg of the ride.  We had a couple more miles into the wind before we got to head north a bit and have the headwind turn into a crosswind.  I had a decision about ride length to make along this leg as well.  My knee was still a little tender after the CAC and the century ride from the previous week, and I didn't want to put myself in too much pain because I didn't want to drop out of Cedar Cross before the ride even gets underway.  While the knee was mostly okay, there were a couple times where I put a sudden pressure on my foot that caused a jolt to go up through my leg, and that was making me nervous.  Strangely, it seemed to be happening when I start up after my rest breaks.  I think this means my best bet at Cedar Cross is to do the 112 miles without stopping.  I just need a personal support vehicle in charge of refilling my water bottles.  With the occasional jolts of pain I was getting, I decided to cut the ride short and do the medium route back to the car.  When the routes split, I assured George that I would be okay getting back and we said our goodbyes. 

The added bonus of the medium route was that it immediately headed west, so I had a nice tailwind for a mile or two that I took full advantage of before heading up towards the small town of Venedy that was the other rest stop.  Since I still had plenty of water and the knee seemed to be okay so long as I didn't stop, I rode right by this rest stop and headed back to St. Libory.  The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful as I think I saw about 4 other riders after splitting off from George, and about 11:30 I made it back to my car dry (except for my sweat) and with only a slightly sore knee. 

I did get rained on during the drive home, so it's probably a good thing I took the shorter route, although I think George said he did stay dry.  I also got my first Orange Sherbet ice cream cone of the season from Dairy Haven in Caseyville, so that did a pretty good job of easing what pain I did have.  I've mostly stayed off the bike this week, only doing a short little ride with the family Tuesday night and riding into work today, so hopefully I'll be good to go this weekend.

BFC Dog Prairie Ride

I have to credit Trailnet's Bicycle Fun Club with getting me interested in all of these long distance rides.  I bought my road bike in March 2009, and I either saw their calendar of rides online or in a shop not long after that.  Their first ride of the season was at the beginning of April, and on a cool, windy, Sunday morning, I ventured out to Orchard Farm High School to see what these rides were all about.  There were 3 choices of routes, one was about 11 miles, one about 25 miles, and one about 45 miles.  The day before, I had ridden 10 hilly miles around the house, so I figured I ought to be able to do 25 in the flood plain no problem.  I was mostly right.  Since there was this 20+ mph wind out of the south, and the route went north of the high school, everything was just fine until I had to turn around.  On the way back, there were probably 4-5 miles almost straight into the wind that about killed me, (I think I was going about 7-8 mph on those stretches) but I was hooked.  When I got home, my wife challenged me to do all of them, and not being one to back down from a challenge, I started all 20-some rides that year (2 or 3 ended in the SAG wagon), including the end of the year century.  I actually won a hydration pack from Trailnet for doing the most rides of anyone that year.

At any rate, the 2012 season of rides kicked off back on April 15th out at Wentzville HS.  Throughout the week, the forecast had some chance of rain, but Sunday morning, it was saying that the rain should hold off until about 3 or so.  I had volunteered to help at registration, so just before 8:00, I arrived at the high school ready to help set up.  Most of us who volunteered do so fairly regularly, and by 8:15 we were ready to start registering the riders.

Riders anxious to start the BFC season

 Attendance at the early season rides can be hit or miss, so while we had a crowd waiting to get going when we opened, traffic was somewhat slow the rest of the morning.  George and I were manning the non-member table in the trailer, which was nice given the wind that morning.  We didn't have to keep everything pinned down as much to keep papers from flying around.  A little before 10, Kristen & Jules, who were going to ride with George and I, showed up.  After we all got ready, we started the ride.

With the 20+ mph wind out of the south, the first leg north to Old Monroe was easy going.  This is always my favorite part of this ride, because it is also mostly downhill, with Old Monroe being in the flood plain of the Mississippi.  Here was also a decision point on whether to do the medium or long route.  By default, we usually just plan on doing whatever the longest route is, but with the storm front rolling towards us, we checked the radar while we refilled our water bottles.  The storms had reached the town of Mexico, which was about 70 or 80 miles west of us, and we thought we had about two hours before we would get wet.  If we continued with our plan to do the long route, we had about 30 miles left, but if we took the shorter one, it would only be around 20 miles to get back to the car.  We decided to push our luck and do the longer route.

I said the stretch getting to Old Monroe is my favorite part of this ride, but leaving Old Monroe is my least favorite, because the path out of town is on Highway C, which is a higher traffic road with a minimal to non-existent shoulder.  Sunday mornings sometimes aren't so bad on these roads, but it was pushing 12:00 now and church traffic was adding up.  The few miles we had along here were a bit nerve racking as we frequently had traffic stacking up behind us with no good place to pass.  When we made the left off of the highway to turn toward Chain of Rocks, I was relieved, even though it meant I now had to face the headwind.

The stretch here was definitely grueling, and speeds dropped to close to 10 mph.  George dropped us all, but when we regrouped at Chain of Rocks, we decided to try and ride a paceline to help move through the wind.  This definitely helped me out, but Jules was starting to cramp up, so he and Kristen took it easy to the next rest stop.  When we got to the Dog Prairie Tavern at St. Paul, we checked the radar again and from what we could tell, the storm hadn't moved much closer to us (though a slow internet connection may have been preventing the radar from refreshing).  We decided that we should be able to get back pretty easily now, but we got back on the bikes pretty quickly after everyone regrouped just in case.  At this point, we were the last group on the ride, so we had the SAG wagon practically following us in case the skies did open up.

The final stretch is also the hilliest, at least until we got back close to I-70.  Unfortunately, it also has more traffic on it and St. Charles County hasn't added much in the way of shoulders.  There were a couple of incidents here that reminded me why have this general disdain for the county.  The first was when I pulled off to let a pickup go by before I went down a hill, and got yelled at by someone in the truck, and then not long after that, I had another truck pass pretty closely to me.  Grr....  Fortunately, after that, we made it back to the cars without incident, and the rain held off as well, which I was happy about.  Except for those two idiot rednecks, it was a good start to the season.

First commute of the year

I think I've mentioned before that 2 years ago during the first round of Biggest Loser at work, I used bike commuting as my not-so-secret weapon.  Each Wednesday when we had our weekly weigh-in, I would ride in to work, and the water weight I would lose from sweating on the ride was usually good for an extra pound or so of weight loss.  Last year though, I only commuted on my bike 4 times all year, twice in February and twice in July. 

I wanted to ride to work more often, but one of the things that was always holding me back was that there were two problem spots on the shortest route for me to get to work that had a lot of traffic but little to no shoulder.  If I got out of the house before 7, these usually weren't too bad in the morning, but the afternoon was the bigger headache.  Last year, I tried an alternate route home that was on a much busier road, but it had a nice wide shoulder where I didn't interfere with the traffic at all, except in one or two spots.  The only downfall (if you want to call it that) was that it added about 5 miles to the length of the ride.

At some point last year, the trail on top of the levee in Chesterfield Valley got extended out to the far western end of the valley to a road that offers me another way out that usually has a lot less traffic than either of the other two options.  Today, while I drove into work, I brought my bike with me with the intention of riding home, and I tried this new route.  Using a sample size of one, I was very happy with this option, and I want to thank the Great Rivers Greenway and the City of Chesterfield for making this route possible.  It adds another couple miles to the commute, but on my way home tonight, not including the road my office is on, I think I was passed by about a half dozen cars.  Now my only complaint is the 300+ feet of elevation difference between my home and office.  It's nice in the morning (all downhill, huh?), but coming home can wear you out.  What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, right? :)

Now off to bed so I wake up early enough to make it in at a decent hour.

Enough with the flats!

The rains late last week put a temporary end to the awesome trail conditions we've had for the last few weeks, so I headed out on the road bike Sunday to get a ride in after the last round of storms went through Saturday night.  The ride started out uneventful enough as I set out to explore some of the Death by Hills route that I skipped out on last month.  I've been on most of the roads the course uses at some point or another, but I set my sights on a couple roads I've never been on with only two wheels.  I've been on Melrose a lot, but heading west, I've always turned on either Ossenfort or Bouquet to start heading back.  This time, I decided to venture all the way to where it intersects Highway T.  That might have been my first mistake.  After I passed Bouquet, the road went down a steep, twisty hill that had a good amount of debris on the road from the recent rains.  It was not that fun to actually go down.  When I got to the bottom, I paused for a few minutes to gauge the traffic on T.  After I decided that traffic was light enough that I could probably make it over to St. Albans without incident, I made the left turn and pushed myself as much as I could until I could get back onto a quieter road.  Unfortunately, right as I was approaching the entrance to St. Albans, I noticed a weird noise coming from my front tire.  I pulled off the road and saw it was losing air.  Grrr!  Looking around, I saw a tree stump that I could sit on while I changed the tire.  Pulling out my spare tube, I started freaking out that I hadn't put a new tube in my pack when I saw that the one I had was dirty (I had never put a new tube in after my flat in January).  I then tried to call for SAG support (my wife), but I didn't have a signal.  So then I started thinking and realized that the problem with that tube was simply the valve stem had become unscrewed, so I calmed down, got the tube changed, and aired it back up.

Unfortunately, this kind of sucked the fun out of the ride and my goal now was just to get home without further incident.  Flats always make me nervous like that.  Across the street from where I changed my tire was Bassett Road, which connects up with Manchester, so I headed down that road, and almost immediately I saw some buffalo.  That was pretty cool, as you don't see those around Missouri very often (unless you're at Lone Elk Park or Grant's Farm (don't they have a few?).

Bassett had a pretty good hill to climb up, and then from the top of that there was a good downhill to Manchester.  When I got to Manchester, I had remembered that there was a monument very close to where I was that the St. Louis Cycling Club had erected in the early 1900's marking the county line.  I made the right on Manchester, and headed out looking for it, but as I headed further up the hill away from Bassett, I figured I'd missed it and turned around to head back.  Sure enough, it was almost back to where I had started from, so I swung around to grab a picture.

As I was doing this, the guy who lives across the street from this monument pulled out and stopped to tell me how he's been telling riders about the monument ever since he moved out there in the early 90's, then told me how he thinks cyclists shouldn't be on roads without shoulders.  Meh.  The only roads that get shoulders are busy enough that I'd be constantly breathing exhaust from cars, as I learned when I got back on Highway 100 and headed for home.

Before heading home from work today, I was trying to decide between pulling the road bike out again or hitting the trails.  I checked the GORC forum and someone had posted that Greensfelder was dry, which surprised me.  Then walking out to my car, the wind was still blowing pretty good, so my mind was made up.  Trails it was.  When I got home, I gathered my stuff and headed over to the trails, seeing my coworker's car already in the lot.  Since the last two times I've been out, I've run Declue clockwise, I decided to run it the more traditional direction, especially since I haven't ridden a couple of the reroutes that direction yet.  Everything started off almost perfect, I made it down to the Allenton Road crossing only putting a foot down once, and that was just because I swung a turn a bit to wide.  I was getting hung up a bit more through the switchback areas since they're more rocky and technical, but I was hitting a few areas that I've struggled with before.  I even got almost halfway up one of the sets up steps before I had to dismount, and that's when I crossed paths with my coworker.

Springtime on the trail

Unfortunately, the equestrians couldn't wait for dry trails to ride.

We both took a break for a minute before continuing on, but not 5 minutes after I passed him, I heard a hissing sound.  My front tire had gone flat.  I pulled it off and started trying to change it when I managed to break off one of the levers in the rim.  DOH!  That's when someone came up on me and asked if I had everything.  I told him what had happened, and he stopped and starting digging for his.  It turned out his were missing, but his multi-tool had a lever built into it.  With that, we managed to get the tube switched out, but when I started airing up the new tube, it wouldn't hold air, and I started to wonder if I was carrying another bad tube in my bag.  That will teach me to be more careful on my pre- and post- ride checks.  Thinking about that though, my last flat on that bike was noticed either at home or in a parking lot.  Surely I wouldn't have put a bad tube back in my bag if I wasn't on the trail, would I?  Since the guy helping me was on a 29er, his tube wouldn't work with my wheel, so it was hike-a-bike time for me.  Luckily, just up the hill from me was an escape route, so I hiked through the weeds, and walked my bike about a mile back to the car.  When I got back home, I got the tire changed in the comfort of my garage, and I'll have to head back out again tomorrow to see if I can end this string of bad luck.

After I started wrapping up, my wife came home with the kids.  It was getting dark, so she took J in to give him a bath, but K wanted to stay out with me.  She looked around the garage, and immediately asked, "Did you have a flat, daddy?"  I looked at her in amazement and asked how she knew that.  She pointed to the tire levers I still had out and said something to the effect of, "You have those out.  Those are for changing flats."  Wow, this girl has a memory!

Return of the Wednesday Dehydration Ride

When I won the first episode of the Biggest Loser my coworkers put on, my bike was my not-so-secret weapon.  I am fortunate enough to live close enough to where I work that biking to work is a possibility.  I don't do it as often as I would like because a couple of the roads I use to get there are less than ideal, but the during the summer of 2010, I rode to work almost every Wednesday.  It was an easy way to wring that extra pound or so of water weight out of my body to get as low as possible for the Wednesday morning weigh-in.  This strategy didn't work nearly as well during round two because it was in the winter and I wasn't going to leave the house in the dark on two wheels.  It was also a cold winter last year and I didn't ride very much during that winter either.  This year, it's been so mild that even though it seems like I'm missing a lot of ideal weather, my miles are definitely up over last year (thank you Team Virtus Super Century!).  It's also been noticed on my waistline.  I haven't mentioned the Biggest Loser contests much lately because 1) I haven't won any weekly weigh-ins since Christmas, and 2) I've been stuck at about 210 for the last month.  This week, determined to break through that magic number, I decided to bring back my old friends, dehydration and starvation. 

After coming home Monday to the kids playing outside, I let my wife go for a run which lasted a fraction of the time it normally would.  She came home complaining about the 80°+ heat and the 15-20mph winds after barely running a mile or so.  At that point she wanted to cook dinner, so she promised me that I would be able to go out on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, my coworkers had brought their mountain bikes in and said they were going to Greensfelder, so I took off a few minutes before them, grabbed my bike from home and met them over there.   Unfortunately, in my rush to meet them, I managed to forget my helmet, pump, and gloves.  After the family ride the week before, I must've neglected to transfer all of that back to my car, as the pump was in the garage and the helmet and gloves were in the laundry room.  Since I was in the parking lot when I realized this, I decided to just ride without the helmet, and I've been on a few rides sans gloves lately (usually because I'll bring the winter gloves and get too hot), so that was no big deal.  I asked if my buddy had his pump with him, but after feeling my tires, I decided that they were probably okay.  He insisted that I check though, so I went ahead and checked them.  On the back tire, everything went normally.  However, on the front tire, when I went to unscrew the nozzle from my valve, the cap on the presta valve came off and flattened my tire.  I screwed the valve back in, and aired it up.  But when I took it off, the same thing happened.  Then I let my buddy try it.  Same result.  Finally, when we got the valve back on, I just went and got my CO₂ out and used that to fill it back up.  Fortunately, that worked without any issues, and I just had to hope that I didn't flat on the trail.  It was warm enough that day, by the time we made it around a lap of Declue, I had drank all of my water and was ready to head home.  Plus, with all the time we wasted with my tire, it was already 6:00.

Wednesday, I was a little late getting into work, so it was almost 6:00 by the time I got home.  With the weigh-in the next day, I was determined to break through 210, so I skipped dinner and went for a ride on the road bike.  I knew I didn't have a lot of daylight left, so I decided I would just ride east for a half hour or so (so the setting sun would be behind me), then turn around and come home as the sun would hopefully be below the horizon not blinding any drivers coming up behind me.  I made it up to Clayton Rd, and then turned around just short of Baxter.  Coming back, at one point I thought I saw a lightning bolt off to the south, and then as I was turning to get off of the bike trail I was on, I saw this amazing looking cloud.  It looked almost like a cross between the A-bomb explosion and something out of the Ghostbusters movie.

As usual, the picture doesn't do this justice, but it was one crazy looking cloud.

Sure enough, within the next hour or two, a couple isolated storms moved through the area, the ones that are more annoying than anything because they'll get your car dirty, but it's not enough actual rain to water the grass.

Thursday, I went in for the weigh-in, and my strategy worked.  I came in at 208.2, which wasn't enough for me to win the week, but I at least broke through the wall that 210 was starting to become.  Hopefully, I can get some rides in over the weekend to continue my progress.

Death by (avoiding) hills

A week ago was Team Seagal's Death by Hills ride.  I'm don't consider myself a very good climber, but with where I live, it's really difficult to go on any kind of lengthy bike ride without encountering a few of them.  This ride was going right through my neck of the woods, and it was designed to hit the steepest of the steep around me.  What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, right?  The forecast for Sunday was sunny, windy, and 60°, so a little after 8:00, I hopped on my bike and headed over to The Wolf Public House, formerly Lone Wolf, to hop on the ride. 

The last couple years it's been reported that 50-60 people have started this ride, but this ride continues to gain notoriety and there must've been close to 100 people milling around the lot at go time.  A little after 9:00, the group took off down Clayton Road with me somewhere in the middle of the pack.  I'm pretty sure most of the people I was riding with were part of the local racing scene (why else would you subject yourself to this?), so I wasn't sure how long it would be before I was spit out the back of the pack.  Even though I was in the first group when we got split up by the light at Clayton and Clarkson, by the time we crested the hills on Clayton and Westglen Farms, I'm pretty sure I was at the back of the pack.  At this point I knew that I was going to have to skip some of the out and back climbs to avoid being horribly dropped.  What I didn't realize was that by skipping the first two I would put myself at the front of everyone. 

I was with a sizable group across from the start of the John's Cabin loop, but for some reason, when we went back down Old State, a lot of them stopped at the bottom of the hill and I was with one other person who continued down to Alt Road and we then waited for a group at the top of that hill by the entrance to Hidden Valley.  At that point, the talk was mostly on whether or not to skip the loop south of Allenton.  I thought there were going to be several who avoided it, but I must've been mistaken, because when I headed over to the gas station across from Six Flags, there was no one around, and it seemed like it was a good 10 or 15 minutes before anyone else rode past. 

After seeing a couple people skip the gas station, I decided to head out and start climbing Allenton hill towards Greensfelder Park.  While I briefly hung on to a group going down Allenton, they were too much for me and I decided I was probably on my own by now. 

Where do these people think they are?  West Virginia?

As I headed down Manchester towards my next descent into the Meramec valley, I saw this and had to stop to take a picture.  Then after coasting through Rockwoods Reservation, I headed up Melrose back to Hwy. 100 where it time to decide whether or not to continue on or call it a day.  This is the downside of the rides I do close to home.  When the route passes close by my house it tends to become too much of a beacon that will draw me in almost regardless of how much I've ridden or what might be left in the tank.  It happens every year on Trailnet's Tour of Wildwood, and was especially bad the year I rode it the day after my son was born (20 miles, oh that's PLENTY!).

I also thought that maybe I'd take the kids to the park with it being as nice as it was for late February.  As it turns out, at some point I told my wife the planned route was nearly 100 miles, so she thought it'd be late when I got home.  They were long gone when I arrived back at the house.  I should've kept riding, because they didn't show up for at least a couple more hours.  Oh well, I got 40 miles in and that was enough to hit my road mileage goal for February.

February downtime

Since the Super Century, it's been a quiet couple weeks around here.  With the issues I had with my road bike during the century, I decided I needed to get it into the shop before I rode it again and the weather hasn't really been good enough for much mountain biking - not cold enough or warm enough.  Okay, the second part may not be entirely true.  I've heard reports that there were some days that were good enough for trail rides, but then I've also heard reports that some of our trails are severely rutted from people riding under than less than ideal conditions.  At any rate, until tonight, I had been off all the bikes for a couple weeks.

I did, however, go for a run last Thursday! Or was it Friday? No, it was Thursday (thank you, iTunes!).  I had thought about going for a ride that day, but she called me at work before I left and asked if I wanted to go for a run with her, so I decided to go.  We just did a 2+ mile loop around our neighborhood, and I was fairly surprised with my run.  I actually ran the first 80% of the loop or so, except for a couple brief rest walks and having to tie my shoes twice.  The last half mile or so I was wiped, and when we got to the last leg of the route, I started walking.  There's a half mile long block in our subdivision though, and my wife did run that loop 3 or 4 times at the end to add extra mileage.  Maybe some other time for me. 

After we got home, I grabbed a shower, and then I finally took my bike into the shop to get it looked at.  Big Shark and Trailnet were hosting a movie night at the Trailnet offices, and the movie sounded interesting, so those two things gave me enough reason to head downtown.  The movie was a documentary called Ride the Divide about the race of the same name, and it was worth the trip.  Saturday I picked my bike back up from Maplewood, and I finally got out today to test it out.  The noise I was worried about 2 weeks ago was mostly gone and the bike was riding as smoothly as it has in the last year.

I was originally going to ride the levee trail like I have been all the time this year, but with it staying light until almost 6:00 now, I decided to bring the bike home and ride from the house.  Unfortunately, I kept getting stopped as I was trying to leave work, and I left my cleats at work.  Instead of using that as an excuse not to ride, I sucked it up and rode in my tennis shoes.

As I was riding around the Wildwood Town Center, I ran across this dumpster.  I don't know about you, but I think the city could probably put this dumpster away for the next 9 or 10 months.  While my wife saw a couple people with Christmas lights in some neighborhoods off Clarkson last weekend, don't most people have their holiday stuff packed away by now?  Or is this out to collect lights from non-December holidays as well?  Maybe I'll have to put out some St. Patrick's Day lights next month.  Oh wait, I recycled my single color bulbs in that dumpster 2 months ago!  I was trying to get rid of all of my non-LED lights, and while all of those were single color strands, all of the LED lights I have are multicolor.

And here's the other item of interest from my trip, across the street from that dumpster - the future Wildwood city hall.  They just moved into a new building about 2 or 3 years ago, but apparently they aren't happy with being renters and they have to have their own building.  That means the city will have abandoned 2 buildings in 4 years when this one is finished.  Someone seems to have finally bought the original city hall and painted the doors some weird shade of green that doesn't match the yellow siding, but I have yet to see anything productive being done with that site.  Who knows how long it will take before someone leases the site they are in now?  -End political rant-

So yeah, it's been quiet around here, but the weather continues to improve as we head rapidly towards March, and hopefully I'll get out more in the next few days than I have been of late.  I might even have to pull out the trailer for my son and take him for some rides soon.  He seems to want to go outside as often as he can no matter what the temperature is.  My wife took him out this afternoon while his sister was sleeping and he was having a blast driving around on his two little ride on cars and riding in his cozy coupe.  She was cold, but he didn't care one bit :)

Super Century Recap

Officially, the Team Virtus Super Century was supposed to start at 6 AM last Sunday, and even though I knew I probably wouldn't be starting mine quite that early, I set my alarm for 5:20 anyway.  About 5:30, I was still groggy, but I got out of bed anyway and headed over to the computer to see if there had been any updates on the festivities (there hadn't) and check the weather.  The forecast had been saying a 30% chance of rain until about 10 AM, and sure enough, there was rain in the area.  Luckily, it was just a few bands moving through.  I hoped it would clear out soon. 

Finally, a little after 6 I started to get dressed, and about 6:30 I was ready to go.  However, when I went to kiss my wife goodbye, she gently reminded me that I had baby duty until 7.  DOH!  My son, who was probably a year old before he ever slept 8 continuous hours, had been waking up about 6 like clockwork the last few weeks and my job was to wake up with him and keep him entertained or get him to fall back to sleep until 7.  However, the last few days he was starting to sleep a little past 6, and I had not heard a peep out of him at 6:30.  Ten more minutes went by and just as I was starting to think I might be able to sneak out a few minutes before 7, he woke up.  Fortunately, my wife woke up with him, and after she got herself some coffee, I was able to make my exit at a minute before 7.

As you can see, the rain was still coming down, but it was probably best characterized as a steady drizzle at this point.  I've ridden in rain a lot heavier than this before, although it's also been 15-40 degrees warmer.  At this point I was just hoping I had enough layers with me.  I had not gone to get my bike the night before, so I decided that in the spirit of the event (i.e. monotonous), I would do my ride on the levee trail in Chesterfield Valley.  At least I would never be more than about 5 miles from my office if I needed anything or had a mechanical.

After arriving at the office and grabbing a Clif Bar from the stash in my desk (they are my breakfast most days during the week), I was finally on the road a few minutes after 7:30.  I think most people probably had 20 miles in already.  Oh well, I knew I wouldn't be setting any speed records anyway.

Unfortunately for me, the ride almost ended before it got started.  I think I might have bumped the rear derailleur with the door as I was walking outside and as soon as I got on the bike and started pedaling, I head a noise coming from the back wheel that almost sounded like the chain was trying to shift.  I tried shifting through gears hoping that would fix the noise, but it would not go away, then I made a U-turn back to the office to see if I could figure out what the noise was.  Since I'm not mechanically inclined, I could not figure it out, and if I just rode fast enough, I couldn't hear the noise anyway.  Not wanting to bail out 0.3 miles in to the ride, I just went back out. 

Rather than riding the whole length of the trail, I decided to just do repeats on the east end at the beginning as there's more options available if something were to happen with the bike.  As it turned out, I was not the only nut case on the trail in the iffy conditions either.  I didn't see anyone on the first lap, but when I got to the ice rink to do my turnaround for the second lap, there was a group of five or so women getting ready to go out for a run.  When I got back to the spot where I got on the trail after that lap, I took my first rest stop, a little over an hour and 16.6 miles into the ride.

After getting some water and checking my pockets to see how dry my phone was staying (good shape so far), I headed back towards the ice rink for the third time.  At this point, there wasn't much rain falling, but the trail was still wet, so my shoes were getting damp.  The windbreaker I used as my outer layer was doing a fine job of keeping me warm up top (I've cursed the thing for making me sweat in 50 and 60 degree weather a couple times, but that's exactly why I picked it for this ride), and my legs were in good shape as well.  However, after I made the turn to come back the last band of showers started moving through the area, and by the time I got back to the ball fields, my right foot was getting pretty cold.  At this point, 25 miles in and about 9:30 AM, I decided to head over to the office to warm up for a few minutes.

After using the restroom and letting my feet thaw out for a while, I headed back out a little before 10:00.   I went to the east end of the trail for the fourth time and now I was really starting to see the joggers out - probably 2 or 3 on each leg.  I have to say, seeing them made me feel a little less weird for doing this ride under these conditions.  When I made it back to the ball fields, I decided to head towards the west end of the trail for the first time.  While I was still getting the noise from the back wheel, nothing had gone horribly wrong yet, so I felt safe heading that way.  On this leg, I passed about 7 or 8 more joggers in 3 different waves, although by now, the rain had stopped, and some areas were starting to dry up a bit.  I even thought I saw my shadow a few times.  However, my feet were getting cold again, and this time, it was both of them and not just my right foot.

As I turned around at the ice rink for the fifth time, I snapped this shot.  Blue sky!  This day was getting better!  Unfortunately, I was getting low on water.  When I got back to the ball fields (mile 50ish), I checked the water fountains there, but as should be expected for the first week in February, they were turned off.  To add insult to injury, the soda machine next to them was sold out of everything.  Grr...

At this point, I decided to swing back by the office one more time, just so I could refill my water.  I thought about resting for a bit, but it was getting really close to noon, and I wanted to get this over with.  I'm pretty sure everyone else was already finished.  The one exception might have been Jim, who decided to do an English century rather than a metric one on his trainer!  But he's so fast, he may have had that done by noon too!  After I got my water, I really didn't want to head back over to the trail, so I completed the last 10 miles by doing two laps of the street that runs along the side of my building.  It's a little over 2 miles from one end to the other, so I did two laps of it plus a couple of the side streets to finish my century.  Finally, at 12:40, I completed the job and went home to warm my feet up in the shower.  My reward for completing the century - sausage and mushroom pizza and a couple bottles of Blue Moon.  Yummy!

The Super Century Preview

I hear that tomorrow there is supposed to be a major football game on TV.  One that people get together with friends to watch and eat a lot of food.  With that in mind, my friends over at Team Virtus came up with the horrible idea of riding on their trainers for 100 kilometers (thank god they decided to make it metric rather than English) to burn off all of the calories consumed while watching the game before the game actually happens.

I don't own a trainer, but I was intrigued, then I opened my big mouth and signed up.  They did say you could ride outside if you must, so that is the option I'm going to take.  Now I'm sitting here trying to plan a route.  The easy-but-boring option is to go ride the same levee trail in Chesterfield that I have ridden 3 times already this week.  It's 7.9 miles end to end, so 4 round trips should get me 63 miles.

The left photo is the most visually interesting part of the trail.  Unfortunately, most of the trail is more similar to the right photo.  Thanks to Great Rivers Greenway for the pictures.

Pros:  FLAT, close to home, I can wait until the morning to go get my bike, since it's sitting in my office a mile from the trail head.
Cons:  Susceptible to any wind, boring trail, since I ride this all the time right now, 4 round trips on it tomorrow will bring me even closer to trail burnout.

The next option (which I hadn't really considered until 5 minutes ago) would be to do the same thing on Grant's Trail.

Image from Great Rivers Greenway.

Pros:  Flat, though I think there is 200' of elevation gain over the 8 miles.  Relatively close to home.
Cons:  Repetitive.  This trail is also 8 miles long, so I'll have to do it 4 times as well.  It's the opposite direction from work, so I need to go get my bike tonight.  There are a lot of stop lights on the trail.

Option 3 is to leave from the house and ride 62 miles.  It was a little scary when I saw the map of what it will actually take to get that far.  Combining the ride I did on New Years Eve and the one I did on one of the nicer weekends last month (the far point on the New Years Eve ride was where I started that one) only came up to about 50 miles, so I put a leg in to take me over to Grant's Trail and to do about 2/3 of that.

Pros:  I can start from the house.  No repetition, except for the out and back part of Grant's Trail.
Cons:  The hilliest option.  I need to go get my bike tonight.  Traffic.

Option 4 is the one I initially thought of when I said I would do this. It would be to go over to Madison County, Illinois and ride the awesome trail system they have over there.  There is a 26 mile loop I can do twice, then pick an out an back on one or more of the other trails to get my 62 miles.

Image from Madison County Transit.

Pros: Flat.  I don't have to ride anything more than twice.  I could get my bike in the morning.
Cons: A 90 mile round trip drive to get there.

What do you think?  Help me decide!

Colder weather, fewer miles

It's been a quiet week since my excursion to the Berryman Trail Saturday.  After I got home that evening, all I wanted to do was head to bed, but the kids had other ideas for a while.  Finally, a little before 10, they fell asleep and I was in bed within 10 minutes.  Sunday I was pretty sore, but my wife and I did take the kids on a short lived trip to the park.  We got there and my daughter kept slipping on the safety mat that was wet from the melting snow, which sent her into tantrum land pretty fast.  It didn't help that it was almost nap time either.

Monday was a freakishly warm day here, topping out in the upper 60's, so I did get a ride in on the levee trail since I was feeling better.  I wimped out a little with the 20+ mph crosswinds that evening, and only made it to one end and back before heading back to the car.  At least it's staying light long enough that if I leave at 4:00 (big if on some days), I can ride the whole thing without pushing the limits of daylight too much now.  Since the start of winter, the extra half hour of daylight each day we've picked up has been really nice for the evening rides.

Of course, weather that nice in January is usually followed by crazy thunderstorms, and I was woken up twice that night by what sounded a lot like hail.  It seems like we've gotten hail a lot here the last few years.  I wonder if I should have my roof checked for damage?  Since then, it's been pretty chilly, and I haven't been out riding since Monday. 

Without riding, that meant I had to resort to starving myself for the Biggest Loser Challenge at work, which coupled with the Berryman ride was mildly successful.  I was down another 1.2 pounds, putting my total weight loss at 9.4 pounds after 7 weeks.  It didn't win me the week, but the current leader gained weight, so I'm within striking distance of catching him for the overall lead.  I think I've lost more weight, but he is lighter than me, and the contest is based on percentages, just like the TV show.  One more week like this one and I should be at the same weight I was when I won the first contest we had.  While I should've worked harder to keep off what I put back on, I'm happy that I got back on track before it all came back.

Looking at the long range forecast, I think we're looking at a string of days in the upper 40's after we get through tomorrow.  That might mean the single track will be sloppy, but that's plenty warm for me to get some road or gravel rides in.

Getting spoiled by 2012 (so far)

After starting the year off in a deep freeze last Monday and Tuesday, the weather warmed considerably through the end of the week, and it would be bad karma if I did not make the most of the situation.  It's been a nice stretch, but it looks like we will be reminded it's January and not March or April later this week. 

  

Wednesday night, I had a haircut scheduled for 6:00, so that limited any riding I would be doing, but I did at least walk up to the place I get it cut (a little over a mile each way). 

Thursday was a different story.  At lunch, I walked out to my car, saw my mountain bike on the back of it, and pulled it off and rode to get my lunch rather than drive.  Then, after work, I headed over to Lost Valley for some real off road riding.  Mother nature had a little something different in mind when I got there though.  For about the last year or so, I've been parking at "the mound," which is this big rock pile that is used to bury some environmentally-unfriendly/radioactive/whatever-else-was-laying-around materials at this old WWII weapon facility next to the conservation area.  From there, it's about a mile down the Hamburg Trail, where I then make a right and drop into Lost Valley on some rocky double track.  At the bottom of the hill, I normally make a left onto some more double track (hard packed dirt rather than rock here), which lasts another mile or so before finally turning into some nice, not-too-technical single track.  That area was a bit soft, considering that it's been a week since it rained around here.  But once the trail crossed the creek and started climbing, everything was dry and perfect.  At the end of that section of single track, I rejoined the double track road and started climbing the hill back up to the other section of single track.  When I got up there, it was starting to get dark, and I heard some people coming back up the trail, so I waited for them to get out before going in.  But when they did come out, they said there were some areas that were really sloppy and it would be better not to ride that.  Well, that left me with two options - continue on the double track back up to Hamburg where I came in, or go back down the hill I just rode up and ride the length of Hamburg back to my car.  Looking for added miles, and knowing I had to descend and climb no matter what, I went with the latter option.  So while I got about 11 miles in that evening, only about 2 of it was real single track. 

Friday was even warmer than Thursday, so I went back out to Lost Valley after work (no lunch time ride that day), hoping the 70° weather would dry out the mud bogs a bit.  There were a couple guys leaving as I was getting there, so I asked one of them about the conditions and he said almost perfect.  Good.  Indeed, when I got to the area along the creek that was a little mushy the night before, it had firmed up, and most of the single track I had avoided was just fine.  There was once descent that sometimes I'm a little hesitant on anyway that was a little mushy, and given that it was dark by the time I got there, I walked most of it.  I'm still getting used to this whole single track at night thing.  But I made it back up the other side of that hill and got to the point where I would normally turn around and go back to the center double track.  But being that it was dark, and since I'm noticeably better going the way I had come from than the other direction, I continued around the loop as it turned into double track back to the bottom of Hamburg.  So I got 15 miles in with that trip.

Saturday, I pulled the road bike out and met up with a friend to do a loop through the ritzy parts of St. Louis County.  We parked at a strip mall in Town & Country, then rode east through Frontenac and Ladue before turning south towards Webster Groves, and then heading back west to our cars.  I sometimes forget how hilly the more built up areas of this county is, as the whole ride was pretty rolling.  Being I have 60 or 70 pounds on the guy I was riding with, I was struggling to keep up with him on some of the climbs.  All was well and good until we were about 4 miles or so from finishing when I noticed my wheel was wobbling a bit.  Sure enough, it was losing air and when I tried to fill it up it lost even more air.  Turns out, the nozzle on the tube was getting unscrewed and letting the air out.  But I didn't figure that out until the tire was off, so we just replaced the tube.  As we were pumping the tire up, someone rode up by us who happened to live right on our planned route, and he offered to let us use his floor pump.  We graciously accepted, and so with about 60 psi in the tire, I limped over to his house to fill it up the rest of the way.  This guy had some interesting stories about unsupported touring (he was out training for an Alaskan tour this summer), and we would've stayed and chatted longer than we did, but it was getting to be after 4:00 and daylight was fading.  So we parted ways and made it back to our cars with a half hour of daylight to spare.  Good thing, since I didn't bring my light.