Tag Archives: bike

06252018 – CrossFit

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Surprise 1 Rep Max Squat Day. Had I been paying better attention I would have known it was coming and prepared a little differently in the morning! Oh well. 

After a different style warm up including cross body kettlebell deadlifts, pulsing squats and jump roping we hit the rack and started squatting! I had been super consistent early in the squat cycle and then with my races missed a few weeks and didn’t really get back into super heavy weight. Thus I wasn’t sure what I’d do. 

We did several rounds of squats getting the weights up there. We made too small of a jump early and made up for it later. Long story short. I hit 205# which is a 5# PR! 

When it came back to me I tried 210#. I thought I needed to get further down and when I did I lost the tension and my knees collapsed so my spotting crew helped me out and 205 was the ticket for the day. Always pleased with a new PR! 

Afterwards we had a 1 minute Max Effort Assault Bike challenge. The measure was calories.  I accidentally started pedaling backwards somehow, but squared it away. That was possibly the most painful minute ever. My heart was flying and my legs were cooked. I was standing too so man was that a long minute.  I got 22 calories!  Not too shabby! 

In the evening I racked up 4 miles on the bike pulling the trail behind! 

06232018 – Bike

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I started out on my mountain bike and hit the Classic Theo loop, before I got a flat tire.  Ugh.. in the same spot (at the bottom of the stem). NBD, I had a spare so I changed the tube and guess what… I had a presta hand pump and not a shrader one.  Ugh.  A few rider had passed while I was working on it and they checked on me, but I thought I was good. Not another walk out of the trails. This is the third tube that’s popped there,  Before inserting the new one scraped out the hole with my multi-tool but I didn’t actually see anything that might be causing the problem.  I didn’t see any other riders. So I rode 2.2 miles and hike a biked about a mile!

When I got home everyone was still sleeping so I decided to switch bikes and went for a quick ride on my Motobecane. I’ve taken it a few times on the mountain bike trails between Glenwood and 55 so I did that again.  It still has CX tires on it so it handles the dirt just fine and that section is mostly just riding up the hill and flowing down with a few pump track parts.  Perfect for my bike! I rode around Cedar Lake and to the Mississippi River before heading home.  Total miles for this ride were 10.5 in 48:58.

06162018 – Bike

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With thunder in the background and south of me I hit some trails before the next round came to get us. The new Loppet trail is unofficially open so I decided to try it out. 

It’s pretty nice, nothing really technical but some tight uphill turns and some flowy downhill sections that will be fun to keep riding! I finished the loop and hit the  classic Theo section.

 In the woods it was perfect weather and pretty much completely dry. Then I went and hit the next two sections north of Glenwood. It was starting to rain a little bit and some parts of the trail not in the tree cover were wet so I opted not to hit the flow section south of Glenwood. Just as I was finishing the trails and popped back out onto Wirth Parkway my front tire popped and I had to hike a bike the half mile home.

Fortunately I made it home before the deluge began! One benefit of walking was that I saw this young deer eating berries next to the Plymouth bridge! 

05262018 – Le Grand du Nord

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While it was 90+ degrees at home some buddies and I were enjoying the cool (cold) start of Le Grand du Nord right on Lake Superior.  At the start we were discussing how we might have been under dressed.  We started in the parking lot at the Coast Guard Station in Grand Marais.  We had a nice cool 4 mile roll-out right along the lake shore with a nice cool breeze blowing off the lake.  Once we turned onto County Road 60 we were going uphill and got warm really quick!

This is a Category 3 hill that climbed 766ft in 2.3 miles.  This really separated out the climbers from the rest of us! It only took me 24 minutes to go those 2 miles, but this would be the only major climb for awhile. At the top of the hill the 20 mile route people went left and we went right. There was a group of us that went back and forth on the up and downhills for awhile here.

At some point I decided not to stop and re-fuel according to my typical schedule.  I think I under-estimated the distance and thought I’d be okay. I did my water plan – water every 5 miles and electrolytes every 10.   Somewhere between 15-20 miles I bonked and finally stopped to get some fuel in my body.  Up until then I had been feeling pretty good maintaining a steady pace on the uphills and flats. At one point I thought I would just bail.  It didn’t help that my knee started hurting around mile 15 as well.  Ugh.

Once I got some food I started feeling a little better.  We hit some pavement for the 5 miles leading up to the checkpoint and I hit 32 miles per hour on one of the downhills! The checkpoint/aid station was supported by HED Cycling and they had a crepe station so I had a PBJ and Nutella crepe and a few of my bars.  Walking around also helped loosen up my knee too.  I decided that I needed to add some stretching to my 10 mile snack break.

Leaving the aid station was another long uphill climb. This was only 346 feet over 2.75 miles. At the top we were treated to a lounge on the Chaise provided by Salsa Cycling (see the picture). This was a comfy break for a second and an excellent marketing idea! Up until this point the roads had been great and beautiful! Even the paved sections seemed great!

I think the sun came out for awhile as we hit Devil Track Road and then the first part of Bally Creek Road both of which were pretty exposed and it got pretty warm for awhile. This was a section that felt like it just kept going and when you stopped the bugs got you pretty good.  Turning onto The Grade seemed a little daunting especially as there were signs for Eagle Mountain that we kept riding to. I was glad when we got to the Eagle Mountain parking lot and turned away from it!

After turning off The Grade back onto Bally Creek Road the roads got better.  Around mile 50 it started getting cloudy and we heard some thunder in the distance.  At that point it became a race to beat the storm to the finish.  It sprinkled for a minute, but that actually felt good.  I thought that we had beat the storm, but would be proven wrong.  I thought I made a wrong turn at one point because there was a sign that said Grand Marais 12 miles and we went the other direction. This was right next to a beautiful looking Superior National Forest campground.

At mile 57 the storm finally pounded us and we got soaked.  At the time it felt great and it didn’t last very long.  One guy in front of me stopped to put his jacket on, but I kept going. Around mile 60 there was some confusion as the cue cards said to keep going straight, but there was someone down a side road waving an orange flag.  A group of us waited around for like 5 minutes while someone rode down to check it out.  Once he started back up, we all took off!

At mile 61 we hit the pavement again and it was all downhill to the finish! The rain and the cooler temps from the Lake created some awesome steam/fog off the road.  I tried at 23mph to take a picture and it didn’t really come out.  I also wasn’t trying too hard as I didn’t want to slip on the wet pavement at those speeds and so close to the finish line! The route takes a right turn with 1/4 mile to go and then is a steep downhill.  We were told to take it easy down that part and the last mile was well monitored by volunteers to help with car traffic.  After crossing the finish line I shook hands with the race director and thanked him for a great event.  Even with the rain it was a lot of fun!

I don’t know when I’ll learn my lesson about keep fueled throughout the longer rides, but that was the only hiccup.  Well and not really having a bike setup for so much climbing!

According to my watch here are the final stats:

64.5 miles in 5:52 with 3,250ft of climbing!  This put me in 159th place and my official time was 5:58:24.

The location and weather for this race makes it an excellent gravel grinder!

05052018 – Bike

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Finally some of the Mountain Bike trails at Wirth are open. 3 of the 5 sections are dry and disable! The Brownie Lake section is pretty much an Expert loop so I didn’t bother with it. It’s hard to believe that I went over my handlebars on my first outing!

It kind of happened in slow motion right before the open space in the quaking bog area. It was a slight downhill flow section and I was using my brakes (both front and back) and I think I went over a little bump or something and I got some air. When I came down the front wheel caught and with the brake on I just went over. I got a scrape on my leg. And had to twist the handlebar back straight! I did break my camera post, but the camera wasn’t attached, so that’s good! No one saw it, so I straightened it all out and got back on to continue the ride! 

I finished the Quaking Bog or Southwest Wirth Loop without any other incidents! I’m not super confident in some of the faster flow sections, but this is the first ride. Then I hit the Glenwood Loop. This is a short and sweet loop with nothing too fancy only a little flow. I’ve easily ridden it on my cyclocross bike a few times. 

I made it home before the storm. Oh and I’ve been sick the last few days. Mostly sinus crap. I figured that biking would be easier than running on my body. Hopefully it will go away soon!