Tag Archives: bike

03102019 – Bike

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A great night to ride the ski trails! They were packed solid and I probably could have ridden with more air in my tires than I had. It had been sunny and a little warm. A few places had drifts on them but overall the ski trails were packed hard and looked fast for skiing! A couple of places I added a short segment of the mountain bike trails and they were in good shape too! I wish I had more time to ride a nice mix of all the trails!  Some of the hills are still tough, though I put air back in my tires before heading home and the ride home wasn’t too bad.  I also still think my quads are burning from 19.3!

Hopefully the weather cooperates and we can get some more riding in.  It is going to be a super wet spring!

Total ride time was 5.1 miles in 61 minutes.

03032019 – Bike and Ski

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This morning I spent an hour on the trainer in the basement as the temps were like -12 with nasty windchill. While cold, the day was quite sunny.  Even though the temps were hovering around the cancellation mark we had our last ski lessons today. Quite a few kids were out and we had a great ski. We ended up with about 3.6k of skiing as a group. After we finished I hit the trails for a quick loop and did about the same distance  with the harder hills!  Despite the wind it was a nice day to be outside! 

Afterwards we celebrated the last day of ski lessons by having dinner with friends at the Cajun Twist at the Trailhead.  I had the Nawlins Dog and everyone else split the rice and beans and Zeydeko Rice Bowl.  Excellent food! 

02202019 – Bike

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On the 6th Snow Day of 2019 I hit the trainer in the basement for an hour. I need to replace the batteries in the computers so I can get at least a rough distance estimate for the rides. I followed the ride with a 5×5 front squat. I don’t have a rack so I have to clean the bar first. I did 45#, 95#, 100#, 105# and 110#.

An hour on the trainer is no fun!

Followed in the afternoon with snow blowing and shoveling 8 inches of snow!

01282019 – Bike

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A more reasonable weather day for biking! After several fresh inches of snow and waiting until the afternoon I thought the mountain bike trails would be great for riding. Well.. I was only the second bike on them. Someone had snowshoed to help pack it down, but it was still really loose. I spent a lot of time slipping, sliding, and pushing my bike up the hills. Ugh. Good conditioning right? There were definitely times were I was able to get into a rhythm of riding for a brief period! I can’t wait to go back when it is better packed and not freezing! I couldn’t tell if I was spinning on the loose snow or the ice underneath it all – or some combination of both.

It was 13f and sunny with a little bit of wind. I ended up riding 4.5 miles in 1:21.

01272019 – Ski and Bike

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The kids were at a birthday party during ski lessons today, so I took the opportunity to ski solo. The trails were a little crowded with all the kids, but that was the time I had to get away. I did the full loop skate skiing again and it felt worse, but my time was actually better so that’s a good thing! My glasses got fogged up so I put them on top of my head and as I flew down Devil’s Drop they flew off. So as I went back up I made a slight detour to pick them up! One of the older kid groups was practicing climbing up the same hill and they were better than me! Most of them have been skate skiing longer than me and it wasn’t like it was super easy for them either!

It was about 7 above with a below zero windchill. The sun was out, but not really warming things up too much!

6.5K in 55:12.

A few weeks ago the Loppet Foundation announced that they were opening the man made snow trails to fat bikers on the evenings during the weekend. I think fairly low usage time for skiiers, but the bike trails have been icy so long that it is a generous gift to the bike community. I had hoped to go out on Friday evening, but that didn’t work but I really wanted to get out and try it. So I went, in the middle of a snowstorm!

The conditions weren’t ideal at all! The wind and snow was driving and there was more than an inch of fresh powder on the trails. This made it hard to see where the trail was and the powder made it slow going. I had to walk on some of the steeper hills and once my glasses fogged up they froze and it was hard to see through them. But that was better than getting pelted by snow in the eyeballs!

This wasn’t a problem until I was on the North side of the Haplutter loop. I had managed to get down the hill okay, but when I got back on the trail at the top, I struggled with staying there. I could see two poles and decided to ride between them. Makes sense right? Well after a few feet I came up to a rope stretching across the “trail”. I took my glasses off and somehow I had ended up on one of the greens. Oops. So I made it back to the trail and kept going. Then whomp, I fell off the packed snow into fresh deeper snow. I took my glasses off and I indeed had fallen off the trail and was pointed down the upside of the LaSquandra Loop. Oops! After that everything went fine but as you can see in the picture I had really no visibility.

I wasn’t the only crazy one out there riding either. When I rode up a few people were finishing and as I entered the Hap Lutter Loop a few people were just finishing the loop. So I might have been the last crazy one, but not the only crazy one!

5 above with windchill around -15. 5 miles in 56 minutes.