Views of the Road

The routes for the 5 stage Tour of Ohio was announced today. 

The first stage will be a criterium in Mt. Vernon to be held in conjunction with the Great Ohio Bike Adventure.  

The second stage will be a 70 mile road stage in the Hocking Hills, including Jack Run, Cantwell Cliffs, Conkles Hollow, Chapel Ridge and Glick Rd.

Stage three will be a road race from Gambier to Coshocton and back and will include the climb up Hill Street in Coshocton.

Stage 4 will is a criterium in Worthington.  The Tour will finish up with a road stage from Granville to Utica and back, finishing with laps around the Denison University campus.

I’m not worthy.  Yesterday a group of us went out for the first century ride of the year.  We rode the 2 Dog Leg route created years ago by Dave Buzzee.  We started with 10 riders and after a few took one of the cut-offs ended up with 6 people doing the 100 mile route.  The weather wasn’t quite as sunny as I had hoped and it was still in the 30s with some headwind after lunch, so it was a tiring day.  But, I can’t exactly feel great about finishing when Mike Perakis finished with us, but on his fixed gear bike.  At one point he said to me that if he finished the ride he would know that he never, ever has to try that again.  Apparently, once was  enough.

The weekend before last I rode both days and got in 164 miles.  Nothing particularly difficult and certainly not at any record breaking speeds, but for early March it was a good couple of days and it looked like my training plans to be ready for the 200K on the 29th were working out quite nicely.  A week later and we had close to 20 inches of snow on the ground by Saturday morning.  It’s March for crying out loud.  Ok, I know that the seasons have changed a bit since I was a kid and we get a milder December and January and then pay the price in March and even April.  But, as much as I understand that, it still feels wrong.  In the month that sees the official first day of spring, we shouldn’t have to deal with shoveling snow and rushing to the store to stock up on junk food and milk.  But, that’s exactly how last weekend played out.  I managed a few hours indoors, but that’s really like fat free ice cream after the long outdoor rides of the weekend before.  It’s somehow similar, but not really.

To make matters worse, I made a short trip to Raleigh, NC on Monday and Tuesday for business.  It was sunny and pleasant and altogether unlike the white death covered city I dragged myself back to Tuesday night.  So, now we pray to the weather gods and hope that spring comes rushing back and this coming weekend doesn’t include tornadoes or fast moving glaciers or poisonous snakes raining from the sky.  I have riding plans, damn it.

Yesterday I took part in a fund raiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s LiveStrong program (www.livestrong.org). All I had to do was pony up some money and take my healthy body to the gym. There, along with 100 others, I did 4 hours of spinning to raise money for cancer research. It paled by comparison to what the people I was riding for go through every day, but 4 hours of spinning was tough. Of course, the spinning instructors didn’t ride for 4 hours, so they had fresh legs and measured way too high on the "perky" meter.

Today my legs are a little tired, but it was a good way to spend my Sunday.

Back on October 22nd I decided that the only way I was going to be the kind of cyclist I wanted to be (and the kind I used to be) was if I got my weight down.  I changed my diet (more on that later) and upped my workouts.  That included a decision to try and become a runner (and I use that term loosely).

I started with a program called "Couch to 5K Running Plan" from the Cool Running web site (www.coolrunning.com).  This 9 week program took me from alternating 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking up to being able to comfortably run a 5K 3 times per week (OK, these are pretty slow 5K runs, but I survive them).  Survive was definitely the right word.  At the end of a run I had terrible knee pain and was more than happy to have it be over.  That’s when I decided that I needed to learn how to be a better runner.

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Clif Bar and TerraCycle have teamed up to create the Wrapper Brigade. The program is designed to reduce the number of energy bar wrappers that end up in landfills.

Once you sign up for an account you will receive 4 mailing bags that hold 200 wrappers each. When you return a bag filled with energy bar wrappers Clif Bar will donate $.02 per wrapper to the charity of your choice.

There is no cost to you and you get to help out a charity as well as the planet. Sounds like goodness to me.

More information can be found at http://www.terracycle.net/en-US/brigades.html