Posts Tagged → being a michigander-burgher-ite

Fat Again

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No, the title of this post is not referring to how 20+ years ago I was a hulking, 300 pound sack of man flesh, lost 125 pounds and am now seemingly going out of my way to gain as much of that weight back as I can with a steady diet of burgers, pizza, pasta and beer. No, I am simply adhering to Cycling Writer Law 26/3.7 which states that if you ride, review, touch, hear about or suggestively rub up against a fat bike and proceed to write about it, you MUST mention the word “fat” in the title of your piece, e.g. Getting Fat, Rolling a Fatty, Fat & Fun, Fatties Do It Better, Fat Between My Thighs, etc., etc.,  Since I suggestively rubbed up against rode my Surly Pugsley for the second time this week on Thursday, I have gone with the title Fat Again. OK, with all that fat talk out-of-the-way, I will move on…

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Fat on Fat, Man on Bike Love

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With B-Man in Pittsburgh with his Poppy for the week and Wifey in Baltimore on .gov business, I am considering this week a vacation week. There will be many miles ridden and copious amounts of beer drank. There will be drunk Tweeting and Facebooking, strippers and casual sex with throngs of horned up CMU girls aching to get a piece of me. OK, that’s all pretty much a lie. I plan to get some miles in, hit up some new riding areas, drink a few beers and maybe hang out with some friends. The rest is just perverted daydreaming by a 43-year-old man with a wife of seventeen years and a 10-year-old son out-of-town for the week.

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Fast, Then Fat

Firstly, I extend my apologies to my two faithful readers for not updating in a while. My cycling life has been pretty… um… ah… “uneventful” to say the least and pretty much void of riding (welcome to my summers). The last week was filled with me running on the treadmill (not blog worthy, unless you’re some perverse freak that enjoys hearing about a fat man flopping around on a treadmill as he walks and runs at speeds betweenst 3.5 and 8 miles per hour), my 17th wedding anniversary (freaking AWESOME, but still not blog worthy, no matter HOW much I love Wifey) and hanging out on my front porch drinking beer in the evenings (fun, but again, not all that blog worthy).

With all that said, Saturday I finally got out on some dirt. I took the Superfly and headed up to MMCC with hopes of a good ride. I have done this many times in 2014 and more often than not I have come back in pain (stupid almost 43 year old back!), pissed off and ready to hang up my bikes for good. Thankfully, this weekend was kind to me and I had some great rides…

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Subparness, Sniff It

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With B-Man and Wifey on a short jaunt to WPA for the July 4th holiday and me at home on Jake (the dog) duty, I was hopeful that the later part of this week would be filled with miles and smiles. Sadly it has been filled with suck, subparness, wind, rain, few miles and fewer smiles. Oh well, it beats not riding at all! Or does it?

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A Fave

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This past weekend was one of my favorite races: The Hilly Billy Roubaix near Morgantown, West Virginia (just about 45 minutes from my old home in Western PA). I’ve done the HBR twice in the past (2010 & 2012) but much as I wanted to head back home and race it again in 2014, it just wasn’t going to happen this year.

I’ve loved the concept of Ultra CX races for years now and have long championed the formant and the series. Some longtime blog readers may even remember the weekly raids I used to make in the mountains of PA where I would mix together 40 to 60 mile loops of forest roads, double track and singletrack that featured more climbing in one ride than I get here in half a season. Sigh, memories…

Like I said, I wasn’t there this year, but much to everyone’s surprise the race happened anyway. It looked like it was a mud fest in parts and as per usual– a damn fine race. Check out winner (and fellow Michigander) Mike Simonson’s blog and his race recap. Nice to see Mike get the win and show folks that Michigan flatlanders can hold their own in the big hills (not me, but at least SOME).

You can find more about the Hilly Billy on the race’s Facebook page.

Dirt Day II

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Very fortunate to get out for another 2.5 hours on the bike today with very little pain. It’s been a pretty awesome weekend of riding after the long layoff. I’ll take it. However, between riding and the time I spent watching the U.S. NEARLY escape the “Group of Death” in the World Cup, I am out of time for blogging. Time for bed. So I will just post up some pics from today’s dirt road ride below…

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Scales

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Yesterday (on the road for 41 miles), and today on the trail, was all about the scale. No, not the scale that tells me that I’ve gained 40 pounds since 2005 when I started this blog, fancied myself an endurance mountain bike racer who eventually realized he just likes to ride his bike on trails, gravel and roads, drink beer, eat good food and sometimes race, but the pain scale. I have to say, that even though I don’t like pain, I like this scale way more than that fucking, lying piece of shit in my bathroom… Forty pounds my ass!

This week has been made up of the following: riding, bitching, moaning, hate, expanding my liver, stretching, core work, ice therapy (to that area that makes up the gulf betweenst my two giant love handles) and adjustments to my riding position. Right now, things are going pretty darn, not bad. In fact, today I completed my normal 16 mile loop and on a pain scale of 1 to 10 I think it was merely a 4… maybe even a 3. Woot!

To go back a smidge, I got out yesterday on the road bike. I felt like shit… I felt great… I felt like shit… I felt great. Grrrr…

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While I didn’t feel great over the entire 41 miles of crap Michigan roads, I felt well enough that I didn’t want to sell all my bikes and take up drinking and masturbation as my “go-to” hobbies (they will remain in the 2 and 3 slots).

And I as I said above, today’s slow/quick lap felt pretty OK… ish.

Later…. I have a couple other hobbies to take care of.