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Archive | March, 2014

Dust & Mud

By on March 20, 2014 in Cycling

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The 2014 Strade Bianche race was a super fun race to watch! I highly recommend watching it [HERE] on YouTube or downloading it from your favorite torrent site. Peter Sagan (Cannondale) is such a powerful and fun racer to watch, but was outdone by Michal “The Kielbasa King” Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) who was in freaking beast mode. Watching the pros racing on the white, dusty gravel of Italy was just the motivation I needed (along with a couple high-octane beers) to finally enter the 2014 Barry-Roubaix.

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Another Go At Winter

By on March 18, 2014 in Mountain Biking

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Winter is slowly letting go of its icy grip on central Michigan. Still, I wouldn’t quite call it ideal weather for big base mile road and gravel riding, but it’s becoming more doable every day.

As you may or may not have seen in my last post, up north a bit winter is still rolling along, so today I took advantage of some extra time, shot up for another fat bike ride on the nordic ski trails at Hanson Hills and had another go at winter before it’s gone. [To reiterate, Hanson is done grooming for the 2013/14 season and the trails are open to all traffic, including fat bikes, riding these trails was done legally].

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The ski and tubing hills are still covered with snow, yet were void of people, the small lake was frozen over and my car was the only one in the entire lot. It was sort of eerie and a bit like I had 35 km of trails as my personal winter playground (one of the few benefits of being an active non-contributing member of society.. sigh).

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Fat-ish… Spring-ish?

By on March 16, 2014 in Mountain Biking, Random

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It seems like forever since there’s been a legit blog post about me actually riding my bike (probably for the best as far as readers are concerned). There were a couple of days here and there that I may have been able to squeeze a ride in, but scheduling conflicts and/or weather fronts jacked my chances.

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Après Race Essentials I

By on March 13, 2014 in Random

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OK, now shit is starting to get better in my mental dojo! I just found The Sword Black River t-shirt. This is going to be perfect to wear après race this summer and will look awesome as I wield my (yet to be purchased) Viking sword at throngs of recovering racers with one hand and hold aloft a goblet of strong ale (or reasonable facsimile) in the other while screaming “MAKE YOUR STAND WITH THE GREAT HOUND, THE FRONTIER IS LOST! BLACK WATERS LIE BEFORE YOU, TOGETHER YOU CROSS!!” as Jake The Dog walks menacingly at my side (until he falls asleep in a pool of his own jowls).

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Little In Return & Bloody Knees

By on March 12, 2014 in Cycling, Random

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This week has given me very little and in return I have given back even less. So far, aside from two trips to the gym (with varying results) and spending ten minutes on the stationary trainer before saying “fuck it, this is like the dumbest thing ever,” I have pretty much done nothing. And when I say “nothing,” I mean NOTHING. Well, unless standing at the back door and blindly staring out the window wondering what people with real lives are doing is something, but I am pretty sure that qualifies as nothing. I guess I could consult The Idiot’s Guide to Depressive Slack & Ennui for an official ruling, but I’m way too busy doing nothing .

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Unlikely Inspirations

By on March 8, 2014 in Cycling, Random

This week has been a strange one as far as me  “doing stuff.”  Sadly, it only allowed me one day of “real” riding: Wednesday’s hour and a half fat bike ride. The rest of the week has been a hodgepodge of trips to the gym and time spent on the trainer. Not the best of weeks, but better than many I’ve had.

I was up early today and had no problem convincing myself to get on the trainer.* The problem I had was actually forcing myself to pedal the bike on the trainer. The first minutes of my warm up were spent cursing the vile winter for forcing me to the trainer again and my belly which was bouncing off my legs like a gelatinous, beer filled, lycra covered sack with each pedal stroke. Cuss me! CUSS ME TO HELL! (or reasonable facsimile).

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F Yeah, It’s The Weekend

By on March 7, 2014 in Random

The weekend is upon us and to celebrate, tonight I am going to cook up some Stromboli, have two to twenty-four Torpedos and (for some unknown reason) listen to some big sounding prog-metal about heads on bloody spears, holy nectar flowing from celestial teats and stuff like that. Now what did I do with my mace and Viking helmet?…

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Neat To Do

By on March 6, 2014 in Mountain Biking, Random

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I’m pretty against the whole “bucket list” thing. Mostly because I already lie awake most nights obsessing about the life I’ve wasted and its inevitable demise, I don’t need to add in a list of unattainable things I want to do before I die to all that self loathing and mental drama. I prefer just to say “yeah, it would be neat to do that.”

Case in point: The Sudety Mountain Bike Challenge. This is a race that I think would be really “neat to do.” I’ve talked about it before here and on the late xxcmag.com  but that won’t stop me from briefly doing so again.

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