I love where I live.

Beautiful winterish day. No clouds; minimal wind. Cold, but since there wasn't much wind it wasn't bad. Wore my favorite winter jacket (ok, my ONLY winter jacket), Hind tights, HUP booties, and my cheapo Nashbar winter gloves with liners. It was 20-25F when I started.
The wind is stilll cold, but the sun is feeling like spring. I headed out towards Pinetown road, Silver lake, and Roundtop. Saw that little ski zit against the blue sky. I must say it was quite nice. Appears to be lots of (manmade) snow. I got a good 26 miles in, felt pretty strong and generally had a great ride. Looking forward to tomorrow when I'm off so I can get an easy, long ride in.
Did I mention I only saw about 6 cars the whole friggin ride?
THAT is one of the BIG reasons I love to ride out there.

I didn't plan for THAT.

It was windy today but I didn't think horribly so so I went out for a ride, figuring I'd head into it as much as possible and then have it at my back on the way home. Everything was going according to plan, got to stop at the bank en route, and then go on. It was Not TOO bad until I got to the other side of Mechanicsburg and then it was hitting me HARD from the right side; I'm sure the bike was leaning. Made a left turn on Stumpstown road and life was wonderful; wind at my back. I crest the hill on Lisburn road, look to my left and it is dark as night. Looked like a storm was coming so I put it in TT mode and hammered. No luck. It hit me going down McCormick road. Snow, sleep, maybe some rain. Epic. Blasting along at 27 mph or so with the wind at your back is kind of fun, except when your face is being pelted with sleet and who-knows-what. Fortuinately, I was only about 15 minutes from home. I get about a milke away from home and it's effing DRY. Still hasn't done anything (1.5 hrs later). Oh well. That which doesn't kill you....

1st ride on ageared bike in 09?!

Ok. Except the cross race. My KG felt light and smooth as ever. I'm thru with running and weights; it's ride baby, ride. I'm doing it bit different this year (don't I always?) and not doing intervals or lots of weight training before my very limited summer racing season. I think I did too much last yr but also didn't do enough miles. I'm going to do a few races this summer and then do the intervals/plyo program a bit earlier this yr without the 3 in a row interval sessions. At least, that's the plan now.

All aboard the fail-boat!

Cross your heart cross race in Columbia MD. At an RV campground. Nice venue. In keeping with my resolution to get to races earlier, i arrived about 80 min before my start time. Reg went quick and I was unpacking my stuff when Thor literally rode into me, along with his son, Nicholas. It was good to see them. I get ready and I decide on less is more; it felt warm after riding in sub freezing temps for a month or so. Rode the trainer a while and then hit the course. Lots of ice, some mud, leaves, mulch, stones, pavement, steps, logs, you name it. About 35 or so racers lined up as a 1-4 race; the 1-3's went off 2 min prior to us. I got a pretty bad start and wound up stuck in the back at a bottleneck right after the start. Not good. We wound up having to ruin a good section of the 1st area up to the 1st run-up as it was just too slow to ride and too crowded. Got going and my rear tire felt really low. I kept going but as the lap progressed I realized I should swap out my wheel at the pit. I was riding along OK; had Thor about 5 riders ahead of me (he said that I should beat him. Ha!) Got to the pit and swapped out the wheel only to have the chain drop off my chainring. I was now nowhere in the race. I just went out and TT'd my way thru the race. The run-up killed me as did the steep climb to the finish line. I crashed 1x after that but was apparantly catching up to some people before that happened. I got lapped by most of the 1-3 raceers and by a few of the leaders (I think) of my race. I might hjave finishede DFL. Don't know. It doesn't matter. It was a cross race in Feb and sure was better than almost anything else I could have done on the bike.
Then I got to head home and watch the Steelers win #6. Yea, baby!