Euro Sunday and the Roger Hamond Ride

we gathered at the WS 'Bucks sunday for a big outing out west. The crew needed a good long one to prep for the Bone in less than 4 weeks now. Pete had great route west that took us out thru Fermi lab and then north into St Charles. Like almost every other time i have been on the Fermi lab ride - there was a headwind on the way out. We rolled bar to bar with some good turns taken by all. There was good conversation and not too many leg cracking efforts. King had to get back early, so he and Tom rolled back just after getting to the 7-11 on the west side of Fermi. We continued north to st charles where Pete put a huge turn in to crack some legs just as we rolled into town.. Glad he knew where the finish line was... lol. In town we took a mid ride 'Bucks stop; a rarity with the WS crew, but appreciated by myself. It allowed for a natural break and a refuel on fluids as well as caffeine. We talked about how it was the Euro ride as over there, many of the rids go from cafe to cafe en route. Chris McKenney told a story about how one year he was among the tourists to pre-ride the Roubaix route with Roger Hammond and how Roger planned the day around cafes and such. The group was asked if they were racing the coming weekend, apparently all pointed Rogers direction and acknowledged he was the real racer.
We rolled out of the 'Bucks and enjoyed a sweet tailwind towards home. Pete and Matt put in some monster pulls and i was quite content to sit on their wheels as one of the times i came through with Matt and said we needed to lift off a gear otherwise my pull would be about 2 minutes instead of 10. It always suprises me how cooked you can get with a big tailwind, it seems like it would be a cakewalk, but the HR goes up in a hurry and by the time i got home at the 4 hour mark, i was not very excited to stand up out of the saddle any more.

Great route, great ride and thanx to the guys for showing up for a big sunday effort.

Should have known better..

I have a weekend update to come, but for now the tale of my thursday commute..
AM was beautiful, the PM was to have a 30% chance of showers. Now i have chanced it a few times this year and won.. hell any MLB batter that's hitting .750 would be a rock star. So on the fourth attempt to beat mother nature, i lost. There were some light showers early in the afternoon, but at 10 till leaving time the wife confirmed no rain in the burbs, so i decided to launch out. Just some light road spray was no worries for me, it was still warm with a light cross tailwind. One small section of sprinkles got me damp, but not bad. No i should have known better, since i have been riding for 20 some years, that at the first sign of wetness, pull on the rain cape. It was in my backpack, and it would be less than 60seconds to stop, pull it on and get going again, but i had fallen into commuter syndrome - just 'wanting to make the next light green'
I made it to Austin - and it started POURING, with a nasty wind shift, and falling temps.
I found an overhang as soon as possible to pull on the cape, but the damage was done, soaked.
Had i been smart and put it on earlier, i probably would have been able to finish the ride home. Instead my sister was getting ready to leave work, so i met her at Proviso East and she gave me a courtesy ride home.
Lesson learned - put it on at the first sign of wetness.

chicken ride.... grande edition.

another excellent day for the big trip. it was a bit breezy on the roll into work, but a VERY nice tailwind on the way out. I was unlucky and flatted on the roll out of the city, but was fortunate enough to be in front of the SRAM guys. the scooped me up into the fold just as i was finishing the tire change. We made a quick stop at the former starting grounds of the namesake ride - now changed over to a 7-11, grabbed some liquids and fuel and continued to the Chicken Coop.
we must have had 20 on the roll out from Scott's, and it was a pretty snappy stroll out, bar to bar with long pulls being made by most. Everyone is quick in the tailwind. On the turnaround, we finally got the paceline cooking, but there were a lot of Indians and not enough chiefs to keep it fast. finally we got it cooking pretty good, i was in a serious spot of difficulty when i was able to roll back on at a red light. it was pretty clear who was cooked and who had gas left. I decided to throw in the whole matchbook towards the end and help out a few guys that were keeping things fast. Unfortunately it was the 'help out the group 30m off the front' move that left me high and dry and provided little amusement for the group. Somehow i gutted it out up the Joliet hill, which was quite piano for some reason, and the whipping began into the last turn. Brian Haas did a lion's share pull as always, and Pistol Pete set me up well for the final pop.
A vanilla bean frapp was my reward for flogging myself, and also served as dinner for the day. I gathered my backpack and strapped on the lights back at the Chicken Coop and Ritzler and i rolled it home.
Over 4 hours in the saddle for the day, over 2300kj an 130 km overall - - LOVE IT

In and Out

Earth day seemed to be a good reason to ride to work again, it was a lovely day, a bit breezy but not bad at all. AM temps were mild, with the promise of 70's for the roll home. The rain threat held off, and i enjoyed a nice roll back to the burbs, catching an unusual of lights in the green position!
Got home to receive a text that the wife just was rolling out for a neighborhood ride with the trailer and little men in tow. It was VERY nice to cruise the hood and see the boys pointing at airplanes and generally chillin out. ended up with over 1200kj for the day! Very happy i have the ability, facilities and roads to get the commute in - at an hour each way, its perfec to load up on some hours for the month.

5 Hr wednesday and F%^*&%ing windy!!!

I could get used to this... 5 hours on a school night?? the plan - ride in to work, ride out to Scott's - do the chickenride - strap on the lights and ride home. The forecast? 70 degrees by mid-day and winds 30-35mph from the south (the warm westher had to get here somehow right??)
The commute in was mellow, breezy but fine. I loaded up on fluids and a bar for the roll out, i was hoping to meet up with the SRAM-ies, but they rolled early to avoid having to double time it with the wind. I rolled solo, which was fine because i could eat my 'lunch' without worrying about weaving into one of them. Got to Scotts, it was warm, shorts and i could have got away with short sleeves. topped off fluids and grabbed a vest for later. The roll out was bar to bar, no one was too eager to bust it as we headed S by SW, oh yeah, straight into the headwind. Nature break at the turnaround, got the group rolling pretty well until Tawse TAGGED a huge rock in the road, thought he was fine, i told him to give it 5, sure enough, had to park the group for a quick tube change.
Spunkienes ensued as everyone is a hero in a cross tailwind. for some crazy reason, through the 'esses' on wolf rd, we ended up with a small group, and decided to keep it rollin. Big Matt was taking Godzilla pulls so i was certainly content to sit tight. Pete rocked it up Joliet hill and was certainly GONE, but he sat up, Mike Herr and i busted it up to him and took the right hander onto plainfield with just our trio. Mike swung off almost immediately, which was a brilliant move on his part forcing me to take point, he claims he didnt want to get in the way. Just as i curled my index finger around my SRAM Red shifter for the punch, Pete blasted past me, and it took north of 1300w to start to bring him back. I got to his rear wheel and thought i would run out of road, but he looked under his right shoulder for some reason, the left side was the sheltered side, it was a complete Zabel moment for him as i still possess an ability to stretch my front wheel an extra 5 feet with a well placed bike toss pimping him for the line. Let me again clarify that Pete was GONE on the hill if he chose to, so to steal a phrase from Enmark, don't spike the ball if you are beating retards, i wold say that Pete GAVE me a chance to stay in the hunt by waiting, and i never look a gift horse. well, anywhere on the horse!
Roll call???
5 hrs - 130km - 2297kj .. yes ..it was a WEDNESDAY
Fat kid - OUT like a light tonight!

Punched in the Kaiser

Rick called me today to se if i could get out for a ride. The wife was oncall so at first i said nope. With some juggling, i was able to sneak out after all. I have been fighting a stomach bug for a few days ( read can get too far from the bathroom in a sitting position) and i was finally felling better, so i figured since it was sunny i'd enjoy getting out.
There was a nasty N - NE wind, so we rolled out west down the tracks, looped out past Benedictine U and thru the neighborhoods back up 59th st and home.
I felt ok going out, but anytime the road turned up and once we caught the headwind, the signs of being dehydrated, and i was getting a severe punch in the Kaiser from him. He encouraged me, but the efforts hurt to get it done.
Glad i got out - another 30 miles in the book 1:45 rolling and north of 1100kj was good by me.

Fat Kids Camp

We set out on the journey south to the island of Evansville in search of sun and mild temp.
we arrived to drizzle and high 40's - not quite ideal
Friday got a decent 2 hours or so, but had to deal with some flooded roads and some turn around, so we got about 35miles.
Saturday we opted to skip the early group ride and head out when the temps warmed up a bit.
We rolled on our own for a few hours, and we determined that E-ville has a TON of rollers, and not a lot of long sections of flats. Now there are no monster climbs, but certainly enough opportunities to claim the boss of the bergs title if you choose to. We looped back around and met up with the afternoon group ride, which was all of 5 people i think. They were pretty unorganized, and instead of welcoming another hand full of people to pull along in the winds, they choose to stay pretty unorganized, so we left their company after an hour or so. Diesel Dave has not logged many miles this season, so the bubble burst at about mile 50, and he was done thrashing it and we settled into a more reasonable pace, since there was only 3 of us, and plenty of headwind roads separating us and home. I took a pretty good 10 min pull, was pretty happy with the efforts of the day, and was very pleased to roll in with 5.5 hrs and about 85 miles on the day.
Sunday was the biggie. We headed out to the AM group ride that had some heavy hitters, so i stayed tucked in and pretty attentive for the early part of the ride. Once we realized that they were going to take it pretty mellow, i was more than happy to get my nose dirty at the front.
we had about 2.5 hrs with them, then rolled through town to the other side of E-Ville to meet up with the afternoon ride. There was a good lunch stop at Hucks, and found that Lunchables make a great ride treat. The afternoon ride looked to be a good group and was a bit more organized than the previous day, but again, winning the group ride at all costs is a theme down there. Apparently its perfectly acceptable to drop and / or strand your fellow riders, as long as you won the ride. One guy rolled off the front and shortly after a small group began to chase. I was content to sit tight and see where it went to. I realized they were not gaining any ground, so i put in a pretty good effort to bridge up to him, realizing that Trent was only able to hold my wheel for half of that ride, and i was now locked in the whipping blocks of skinny dude in a very rolling section of roads. Coming around a bend, i saw what was going to hurt lots, a nice stair step climb for about 600-700m. I hung tight and gave it all the gas i could to stay on his wheel, i rolled the top next to him, and swung off calling it a success to stay there. The boys finally rolled up to me, and after being 'Thanked' for starting the whole mess, Dave disclosed that the no-miles-then-add-uber-miles had wrecked havoc on his achilles. we rolled in with our own small group, and had a successful 100miles at 6.5 hrs.
Monday we all had signs of wear. My legs were HEAVY, Dave's achillies was not feling much better, and im sure Trent was pretty cooked as well, although he was holding it together pretty good. We rolled pretty mellow, and even got in a doughnut stop for good measure to reinfore the fat kids camp theme. I think all said and done we had about 15miles and 90 minutes rolling.
No doubt a great camp as usual, good weather, good miles, and many many jokes were had.
here are a few snaps from camp...

March Roll call

I will keep it simple here:

17 workouts
21 hrs
9489 total KJ
482km
down 2 lbs

A sunday ride

Late march and early april is always a crapshoot for weather and fitness, Milan SanRemo, E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, or the sunday starbucks ride, its all good. Tawse, Matt C, Matt S, Ritzler and I headed out west with a nice tailwind under threatening skies. It was a nice stroll out to the theaters, then between us, we managed to navigate back in a King route that provided some shelter in the neighborhoods from the breeze. Nice ride indeed, but apparently we stayed a bit long at Starbucks, because there was a nice misty drizzle to greet us as we mounted up to roll home. Not that it wasnt chilly and damp enough, but the extra mist in the air really made the last few minutes reary. I rode back with Matt S and Ron, and put an extra few minutes on the zoo path to round my ride out to an even 3 hrs.

in good company

Chicagoland had mild temps and sunny skies. I have heard rumors that Chicago warms up in the spring, but i'm pretty sure i forgot about it. We had a good group roll out from WS. It was good to have a tanned and tires Tawse back in the mix. Feltz also graced us with his presence, but Ritzler and Wassman went soft on us and bailed after riding out from the city. Nothing too eventful, we did have Apache go ripping past us on the reurn trip on frontage, only to see them crawling on Cass when we turned the corner. Guess its all gas only in tailwinds for them right now. Our rotation got rolling pretty good, and i got gapped going up Joliet hill. I had to put in a big effort to get back to Tawse, who dragged me through thr right hander on Plainfield Rd for the final. I came past him and gave him a tow past the Feltz, but there was no closing on the 2 escapees up the road. Tawse took 3rd, with me trailing for 4th. Good ride, good coffee at the Bucks, and the first road ride of RED was AWESOME!!

RED

about this time last year i posted some sweet pics of FORCE. It was a Fantastic new group and over that past year has exceeded all expectation on performance and reliability. I am completely beside myself with excitement about the latest and greatest from SRAM. Not only did i upgrade to RED across the board on parts, but i also plunged into late 2004 with a new outboard BB and new SRAM SRM! With only 2 rides on the new parts so far, i can confidently say there is another change for leaps and bounds. The shifting is crisper and the trim is much appreciated.

I will follow up on the overall feel in the next week or two as i really get used to the shifting and really appreciate the change.

cluck cluck

another day of decent temps and sunshine. we had a bit bigger group than last week roll out of WS, but relaxed about 10 min out that a few held back to wait for C-Ramo.. we all got it together after a spirited chase. The roll out was good, we flipped it at lemont road, then rolled 91st up to wolf. We had a nice rotation going after shaking out the cobwebs of a rotating line (nice save Alex W) the it really got whipped up on wolf rolling in. All enjoyed a nice chat at the 'Bucks and headed home to play another day. Good to see Brian and Francine Haas back out to grace us with their presence.

chickenride!

A great time was had by all on the Chickenride.
Great to be back on the bike after a long lousy winter in Chicagoland.
Lots of old country roads, but lots of great conversation, which is a lot more than I'm used to riding alone all winter
See more snaps of the ride at: http://chickenride.blogspot.com/

a boys dream..

being able to play with big jugs! I couldn't pass up the opportunity to post that one.

chicken recon / secret training

so it was my day off, it was sunny and above freezing. Not nearly as nice as sunday, but being able to get outside 2x in a week with the weather we have had is priceless. Not only that, but it allows me to have 2 posts in the same day.... yeah buddy, livin the dream. Could it be secret training? nah.. i wouldn't exactly say i had a banner winter. Most winters the crew expects me to log the hours indoors and do what it takes. Lets just say that this winter i fell way short of my own expectations.
I wandered out the chicken route to see the damage winter took out on the roads. The neighborhoods have a stark resemblance to Old Country / Muncie training roads. The new pavement on the frontage road is in good shape, but they must have a pretty rough drainage issue, as there is a huge glacier of ice in one section. The wind was from the west, so it was very enjoyable to tag up at the theatre and start heading back east.
An enjoyable ride, seeing that i was on the bike and not at work.
check back soon, the fat kid needs to start riding more if I'm gonna survive fat kids bike camp.

Rumors.....

There is a rumor circulating that the Enmark is back on the bike.
no new updates on the blog yet, but perhaps we will see the man re-emerge just like his hero Mario C. If i were a betting man, if the Enmark does re-appear, look for him to be dusting field sprints again by late summer.

pot holes and road spray

It was too good to pass up here today. 37 degrees at 7:30 am, almost 40 by ride time. we rolled out of WS starbucks and headed west. It was beautiful. All except for the fact that work has some computer upgrade over the weekend, and we had TO GO IN today for a few hours to make sure they didn't start speaking Taiwanese or something. Seriously? Sunday? and 11 am at that?? Couldn't we do 8 am or 4 pm or something besides the middle of the freaking day?
figures, the only day above freezing here in 3 months and i gotta freakin work. Someday Chase will be bought by a BIG bank and we will have an IT department to do that crap. oh well.
I did manage to get just over an hour and a half in, which was fantastic. I realize finally after 20 years + of riding a bike why spring rides are so tiring. true - it may be my lack of conditioning, but i have determined its more the fact that i lack the necessary attention span to not ride myself into one of the craters that have developed across Chicagoland over the winter. I use more energy paying attention that actually turning the pedals i think. Its my story and I'm telling it how i want to.
Hopefully we can get out once more beforre the Chickenride starts up shortly.

catching up

so i am now 12 days into quitting drinking pepsi cold turkey. i can say the headaches have been brutal, and im glad i was never addicted to meth or something crazy like that, because im ready to tear my head off; and all i quit was drinking pepsi.
it also seems i quit riding, between illnes throughout the family and crappy weather that requires me to clear snow instead of riding, its been fairly bleek for feb so far.

thats all for now, time to go drink some lemon water and not think about pepsi

later

RIP Sheldon Brown

Anyone who ever tinkered with a bicycle, made a living in the back room of a shop, or needed to find an answer to a unique question; knows the name Sheldon Brown. Master of problem solving and cycling’s' own 'google' for information; has passed away from a heart attack Feb. 3 2008. The world of bicycles has lost a guru, and I wish his family well.

better than a bike ride....

my friend Bill finally bought a house and moved in. Im really glad he is a bachelor, because Super Chexx hockey now takes over the room most people would use to eat dinner in. Bill rocks!