Views of the Road

Saturday was the Ohio Randonneurs 200K Brevet. 40 riders left the Motel 6 in Grove city for the 127 mile round trip ride to Tar Hollow State Park and back.

It was cold at 7:00. The forecast was for sunny skies and north-northwest winds. Sunny skies was a good thing. Wind from that direction on that route meant we’d be facing a headwind for much of the final third of the route.

As the group rolled out with a nice tailwind, the pace quickly picked up and we made great time in the flats. The smaller hills started before we got to the first control in Oakland and the crowd thinned out quickly as we started into the big hills in the middle of the route.

Read the rest of this entry

Monday I start the 100 Push Up Challenge.  The goal of the 6 week program is to gradually increase the number of push ups I can do until I can pump out 100 of them in a row (no cheating).  At my current level of fitness, I can do 30-35 pushups before my forms starts to suffer.  That allows me, according to the website, to start at week 3 instead of at the very beginning.  When I’m done I can buy the t-shirt.

3 weeks ago I got a call from the CIO at work, asking if I could come to his office for a quick meeting,  When I got there and saw him and a Director from HR I knew this wasn’t going to make me happy.  Turns out, I was right.  The company was making some cuts to deal with decreased sales and profits and my position was no longer necessary.  In truth, my position is still in place there, but someone else is doing the work.  The CIO hung on to his core group of people and I was the odd man out.  I can’t say that I would have done something different if I had been in his shoes, but it was still tough to look at the teams I built being handed over to someone else when it was really that guy’s job that wasn’t necessary any longer. Ok, so that’s a few weeks in the past.  Of course, one of my great disappointments is that this didn’t happen in April or May.  If I’m not going to work every day, at least I could be getting in a little extra riding.  But, there is a lot of snow on the ground and the temperature hasn’t been above freezing for some time. I’m working my network of business contacts to find something new, but it’s not the best  time to be out of work in this country.  Meanwhile, I’ll be off to the gym and maybe I’ll tackle a few special projects.

I started this site and then promptly stopped writing and spent the summer riding.  The season is winding down and it seems like I haven’t gotten anything accomplished other than rack up a decent number of miles.  I still have a shot at 30 centuries, but that will be a stretch.  Logging 6,000 miles shouldn’t be too tough at this point, unless the weather does something unexpected. 

 CFC is coming up in a couple of weeks and I have to decide pretty quickly of I’m going to sign up.  It’s been a number of years since I’ve done that 2 day suffer-fest so maybe it’s time I do it again. 

I spent the first part of this week at a conference in Phoenix.  I brought my Ritchey BreakAway with me and added on a few vacation days to the trip.  Yesterday I did a 62 mile ride north of Scottsdale and never really got away from traffic, but I was riding on shorts and a short sleeve jersey, which was a pleasant change from Ohio.

Today I got up early and drove to Tucson to do the ride that was my primary reason for brining the bike with me.  I rode to the top of Mt. Lemmon.  The ride started at the intersection of Tanque Verde and Catalina and finished 29 miles later in the town of Summerhaven at the top of the mountain.  The first 4-5 miles is relatively flat, but then the road kicks up for the next 2 miles.  It is a beautiful climb on a very smooth road.  There is a wide shoulder on much of the route.  I was expecting a tough climb and a great descent.

Read the rest of this entry

This past Saturday I rode the 200K brevet from Alum Creek Dam to Loudonville and back.  I’ve had a good spring training season so I was looking forward to the ride.  I know that most of it would be flat and on roads I knew well.  We’d have 45 miles of hills between Mt. Vernon and Loudonville, but I didn’t expect any of them to be particularly difficult.

The ride started at 7:00 and, let me tell you, it was cold. I’ve heard various reports, but I know it was in the low twenties according to the thermometer in my car.  I knew the temperature was supposed to go up during the day and I didn’t want to be over dressed in the afternoon, but it was way too cold to take too many chances.  I did leave my heaviest gloves behind and went with 3 lighter layers on my hands.  My fingers were painfully cold for the first hour or so, but eventually it warmed up enough to be comfortable.

I started with Steve Gratz, Joe Giampapa, Dave Levy and Ned Williams and we picked up Kevin Swabb who had started late a ways up the road.  The pace was quick right out of the gate but we quickly got a group together and kept a steady pace into a medium headwind into Mt. Vernon.  After a quick stop to get our cards signed we headed out on the hilly part of the course.

Read the rest of this entry