Until the Snow Ends

So, if the only time you have to blog in a week is during a 24 hour race , that's kind of funny, in a sick sort of way. Let's see if I can remember how it all went down. One of the cardinal rules of blogging is not to talk about your job, but we'll have to break that one since it's half the story. You should already know that I'm a software engineer by trade, and that's all you'll need to know. Last Wednesday found me rushing frantically around trying to finish my current work project in time to be out of the office by 3. I had to be out by 3 to make a 5:20 flight out of Providence. I eventually made this flight by 20 minutes, while learning a few things: 1) Never drive on 93 south from Boston. Never. It looks shorter, but is it NOT. 2) Never fly out of Providence to save $130 bucks, because you will lose most of that savings in gas and parking, especially if you get there with barely enough time to throw it in airport parking. 3) The sign on I-95 tha...

Eight laps done now. Finished my second double as the sun was coming up, and just rode my fastest lap of the race (37ish) to finish it off. I am utterly toasted. Four hour drive home is going to be intense.

Now with full sentences! It's 8:30 pm now. We've been on it since noon and I've been sick since Monday. It's a long story and a pretty valid excuse, but who wants to read about that? Let's just say that chest cold + 8000 ft + 10% humidity = serious throat pain. The good news is we're in 2nd overall and might even be moving up. The bad news is this is made possibly by a low 4-person team turnout; with $1000 going to the solo/duo winners, the fast guys are riding that. It took us 6 hours to pass the lead solo, and we're currently hanging 10 minutes away from getting lapped by the lead duo. As a self-respecting 4-man team, we are finding the latter fact a bit tough to swallow. But damn -- those guys are fast . It's not over, though, we've actually only lost 2 minutes on them in the last 3 laps, and it's only the early night. We're hoping to stop the bleeding soon and starting coming back, but when the sun goes down anything can happen ...

Bad News: I just crashed damn hard, while going damn fast. Good News: The blow to my spine was cushioned. Bad News: The blow to my spine was cushioned by a pocketful of gels. Also Bad News: I'm out gels now, and my jersey is disgusting .

It's ok... I guess .

It's been pretty well established than I'm an insufferable racerhead, but with a 24 hour race last weekend and a 24 hour race this coming weekend , even I could figure out that maybe I shouldn't race on Sunday. Judging from what I heard it sounds like I picked a good one to skip, not that I don't like "40 minute climbs" and "rail trails" in my mountain bike race. What to do on a raceless weekend, then? Oh, the plans I had. I was gonna log some "serious hours" and some "cx practice" and some "Wompatuck recon," oh yeah, three rides in two days. Then Linnea and I headed out Saturday on what should have been an easy 40 miler and I could barely pedal, it was like my legs had never even been flexed before, I started to understand why to the average couch-dweller a 100-miler sounds like a big deal, riding a bike is HARD. Now that gas is down to $3.65 a gallon I might just buy an SUV instead. So that was it for "seri...

Warning: This is really long. Ok, I think I might finally be cured of the two-man team. I've done it before -- back when it was the only MTB race I did all summer. Back when I was "kinda" in shape, ok, not really, my training plan was a lot closer to Jerry 's 34 ride plan then what I do now. Oh, right, I wrote about it last year, which of course jinxed me into busting my knee . Anyway. When you race XC's every weekend, it's really really hard not to go hard from the gun. I might be the master of the DFL start, but DFL XC speed is still too fast for 24 hours. Way. Too. Fast. . The great thing about the two-man team is that everyone thinks you're a badass. The bad thing is, you have to suffer like a dog for 24 hours for that respect. Ok, enough foreshadowing... This year's 24HOGG had us sharing a campsite with a 5-man HUP team comprised of my buddy Justin , illustrious bloggers Kerry and MegA , apparently retired blogger TomN , and Chip, wh...

You know, this might have to become a regular feature here. I didn't realize how many boneheaded promoter decisions get made on a weekly basis. Of course, promoters are awesome people, and I love them, and without them the sport would die, and they should never be criticized, etc, etc. Anyway, sometimes awesome promoters make decisions that are not awesome. I will be highlighting one of those today. Said promoter is still awesome, but would be awesomer if they corrected this error. 24 Hours of Great Glen Prize Money: Cut n' Pasted? We all know that I loves me some Great Glen . I've known the crew over there since I was in high school, I've raced there twice, and my third 24 hours is coming up this weekend, and I'm super stoked as always. That having been said, the prize money is one of the most sandbag-encouraging decisions I've ever seen. Let's have a look: See those sections in red? Click the image and have a look if you can't read them. It...

Dedicated readers may have noticed that my july went kind of badly . With the big show of Great Glen coming up next weekend, I probably could have used a weekend off. But on the other hand, I didn't want to head to Great Glen with this gnawing "am I totally burned out?" worry following me everywhere. I mean, I'm going to feel like crap by midnight anyway, when the two-man team starts to really kick my ass, but I need to be able to convince myself it's not because I'm a terrible athlete. So, Holiday Farm it is. I guess the weekend off will have to be the 17th, instead. I raced here last year and had a feel-like-crap start, and then broke my bike two hours (and still not done) later -- but somewhere in between the biological and the mechanical I remembered a pretty fun, mostly singletrack course that might have even suited whatever riding style I have. This year's course was a totally different loop, or series of loops, but had the same flavor as ...

Let's get this out of the way -- this will be a post complaining about some promoters. If you're the kind of person who has trouble differentiating between "specific criticism of someone's actions" and "attack on all promoters by a naive and thankless racerhead," you may want to skip this one. Ok. Let's get started with the Bradbury Mountain Enduro. It's a 30-mile, one lap, Le Mans start mountain bike race that was supposed to happen on July 27th. It's been around for a while and I've heard some good reviews, so I was planning on checking it out. Then, around mid-June, it got canceled, citing land-access issues. Ok -- that sucks, but I can deal with it. Hopefully the weirdos who register for things 2 months in advance on BikeReg got their money back. The real wackiness got started this weekend at Mount Snow when some random guy in the woods told me it was back on. Not being one to trust random spectators with beer, I headed to the...