thursday off work - pot rack!

thirty three degrees
rain today? must ride forest
for three 'easy' hours

today drew and i rode mtb's. we both wanted to go pretty easy - TNR apparently worked him a bit and well, he's debuting a new bike sunday at the dragon's tale. i on the other hand, just wanted to go slow but his slow and my slow are well, somewhat different. thankfully we left out climbing woodruff.

we cruised some gravel, some more gravel, some trail, some classic trail (nearly cleanly -one darn wet root- riding the wet rooty rhodo-tunnel that can't be done (clearly)), crossing a road, dropping leaf covered steep, MORE gravel road, and ripping back to a tree farm. a quick pavement spin and we discuss our plans for the afternoon after three hours of 'easy' riding.

drew agreed to help install a super rad custom pot rack in the kitchen and so up globe rd we went back to the house. a few recovery drinks later and a couple extra holes in the ceiling and voila:




drop drew back to rocky creek - head to stickboy and meet my lovely wife. we pick up some foccacia (late lunch for me), some dirty hot chocolate (hot chocolate + espresso shot) and naan for our homemade pizza dinner:



now i'm reading pro bike racer diaries on velonews.com since proorbust.com still just has one post.... just finished ben king's about classica sarda and i'm on to the next one. banff film festival tomorrow - plenty of great friends headed to town, and tsali bike racing on sunday. i hope my knee holds up. ::finger's crossed:: jg

tuesday night - mtb ride?

so i rode alone
iPod, intervals, pin it!
ready for sunday?

a short haiku for everyone and a photo of the day:

tsali from long ago...


oh, and i found this RAD NEW BLOG - but i think its still really new. thanks for reading. jg

more layers than a cake. hwy90.

so last night mark newton hosted an alpine ski center employee party at his place. it was a good time. the 2010-2011 'snow hard' movie poster was revealed:




and people played oversized jenga - it was custom built by mark himself:





i left his place a little late and as a result slept in until like 9:23a. and today i wanted to ride bikes. darcy had friends in town so after brunch i got my bike stuff together. the forecast for boone was 34deg and a chance of rain. that wasn't too bad but it was really foggy and i couldn't think of a good route that wouldn't hit this type of fog bank:



so i headed down to patterson and started from the blinky light gas station. i pulled on more layers than a cake:



and rolled out warrior rd to setzer creek rd to collettsville rd. i started up the efforts just after adako rd and did 3x 5mins with 5mins RBI. those went well, avg wattage 257,250, and 237, and i turned around at some point (after the second old johns river rd) and headed back. instead of turning onto setzer creek i rolled collettsville rd to valway rd then realized i was riding us321n for a minute then warrior rd got me off the highway and led me back towards the blinky light gas station. i got 31.9mi - 45mi would have been better but at least i got out.

thanks for reading. jg

pasta! 5hr mtn bike ride!

so wednesday night darcy and i got rained out from riding - so instead we made pasta. it was awesome!!! spicy olive oil, red pepper, pancetta, green peppers, and yummy harris teeter brand sauce.




as usual - we managed to make enough for leftovers so i get salad and pasta again for lunch friday!!! woohooo!

almost as exciting as that - i was off work today but i went by this morning to use the compressor and swap some tires out on both bikes/wheelsets. gosh i can't wait until we get a compressor here in the basement... so i had a set of captain 2.2 tires in the basement for a few months and decided today's route required these tires. i pulled the captain 2.0's off my sj fsr and installed the set of 2.2's. and i've also determined that i'm not a good enough bike handler (surprise) to use the micro knobby renegades on the hardtail - especially since one is a pre-production tires with <1mm high middle knobs. anyways, for the hardtail, i swapped the front (production version) renegade 1.95 to the back and put a fast trak LK tire on the front. i'm excited to try this combo next week and i think it will work well for tsali on april 3rd.

so many choices...


i met up with brad blackwell and we headed out to the forest. my poor bike had no idea what was going on - i think it thought it was being kidnapped:



we started at the white church. when rolling back up pineola to the car we hypothesized our ride was going to be 3:52. boy we're we wrong!!! we rode for 5 hours!!! it was a great day in the NC school of tech. i rode some lines that i haven't before and cleaned more than this lady:



which isn't much because she's a cartoon. it was a good day but a little cold considering we had 15 creek crossings over the duration. thankfully i had my trusty wool socks and a long climb to the car to keep warm.

afterwards i headed home, grabbed hiking boots, stopped at stickboy for nourishment, and headed to rockyknob. i got there late but got in almost 2 hours of trailwork. a lot of the guys were doing some rock armouring for sections that stay wet. i felt fortunate to do some corridor cleaning on the first few hundred feet of phase two. it should be rad.

a not-so-quick-trip grocery shopping


then home and i'm thinking about cleaning, eating something, and having people over for the weekend. hopefully the weather will cooperate and i can roll around somewhere tomorrow. thanks for reading. jg

first TNR. 80's music??

so while riding my first TNR of the year - i realized i know the perfect soundtrack.

anyways, we cruised up winkler's creek to russ cornett (the attacks began 9 minutes in. so much for a warm-up - some of us worked until 6pm boohoo) to poplar grove up shulls mill then BRP to the 321 to aho rd then down BRP to bamboo then back on deerfield. i was a little confused that our peloton slow rolled (well, most people accelerated actually) the three-way stopsign at bamboo deerfield to setup their sprinters for the prestigious town line sprint:



still - i think we should 'stop' a little better at the stop-sign. anyways - the ride was fast, good, but fast. my avg speed was 16.97mph (including a small ring booty loop). avg power was 173w. i set 11 new peak power records including 1min at 391w... kind of dorky, but cool if you're a power user too. if not, well, point your fingers and laugh. sure i deserve it. charts/numbers that may or may not mean anything to you:




yummy veggie pizza for dinner. off to bed. mtb tomorrow. thanks for reading. jg

hobby park xc. report i guess.

so i 'raced' at hobby park. knowing our cat 1 19-29 guys get combined with pro, and that i would be happy 'just hanging on' i entered the weekend happy to have saturday off, pre-ride the course with darcy on saturday, hang out in greensboro (the cars are different there)



and did some last minute adjustments.


sunday came around and well so did 'racing.' i picked up my packet and got my first ever single digit race number.



it seemed cool, but i knew i'd have a tough time living up to it. after taking photos of the sport race:








i warmed up a bunch and toed the line with charlie storm, alex ryan, scott frederick, robert fish, and other fast people. i knew i'd be content with making it up the soap box derby hill and to the singletrack with the group.

lofty goals...

i managed that, in fact somehow i entered the singletrack in 7th or 8th position (of 15) - so that was cool. i hung for a while, a few people passed, then hung in 10th or so for most of the 1st lap. a couple guys passed and slowly the gap to them grew. i'm not sure why... i'm faulting my engine for not being powerful enough



and my tire selection may not have helped either. anyways, i was content to stay in front of a guy that went to belgium with the usa nats team (he must have had an off day or broken his bike or something), and not get passed by the fast 30+, 40+ guys until the third lap. it was definitely a training race and learning experience, i have lots of work to do, and now i'm looking forward to tsali april 3rd. results here. thanks for reading. jg

commute + singletrack = great thursday

so earlier this week i decided i would ride my bike to work today, work, then ride home. well i certainly didn't just pick the shortest point from A to B. A= my house. B = boone bike.

this morning i took hodges gap to the college apartments, poplar grove up to bodenheimer road, and hopped on the old-skool hiking/running trails behind the broyhill. i was pleasantly surprised, as i always am once a year when i decide to head up there, by the condition of the trails and the size of the smile on my face. i pedaled around until the clock told me head to work. cut through campus, coffee stop, bike shop:





work.

after work, i pedaled up winkler's creek to flannery fork to check out the condition of the gravel in case i want to ride road bikes on it anytime soon. took russ cornett back to diamond ranch to poplar grove.



off russ cornett

cut through the college apartments again, then suffered up our driveway. it was a great day - darcy had a great day too which made me even happier. she's been busy lately with school, grad school, and being teacher of the year. all the newspaper, magazine, and website interviews have kept her busy... =) anyways, breakfast for dinner:



oatmeal, blueberries, yogurt, sweet potatoes, and eggs with leftover sirloin steak. yum.

we're headed to pre-ride, hang out with evan, and race bikes on sunday at hobby park xc. race report soon. thanks for reading. jg

weekend. evan/greensboro/tyler. danville angler's ridge XC

hello all-

the end of the week was good, friday went quickly and felt productive for a change. we made pasta friday night - paired with pinot noir. leftovers were good saturday at work. pasta - not the wine. as usual, sam got stuck with working on my bike (and darcy's this time) at the last minute. after work we loaded up and headed to greensboro to stay with our good buddy evan mcintosh. we took turns filling up bottles, catching up on the latest news, and went to bed, prepping to wake up an hour 'early.'

sunday we wake up, tyler made eggs, coffee and waffles for us. wooohooo! load up the car - drive to danville. packet pickup. change. start warming up.... the 6hour race was supposed to start at 9:30 and our race was scheduled for 10:01 (cat1 19-29) and darcy was 10:15 (cat3 w's). eventually we got started around 10:55 or something and i'm not sure when darcy finally rolled.

for the first race of the season (and since june 20th last summer) once i got on the line most of my nerves calmed down. 3, 2, 1 -GO! 5 pedal strokes. CRASH!!

someone went down, grab your brakes, go to the left, through the rocks, head down, hammer. twisty windy singletrack. great. a few pro's pass me that got caught in the mess. no problem - have fun guys. go go go.

their trail in danville is very fun. for a 'race course' its actually somewhat difficult. there are a few roots running diagonally in off camber corners, a very few muddy spots, and a handful of very steep hills. i was surprised at how well the 34t chainring worked for me. i made it up all of the steep hills. for two laps. until my legs started cramping...

my plan for food involved sports drink while warming up, sportlegs and a gu at 10:00, then two gels on the bike and plain water. that proved to be a bad idea. with the extra time spent warming up/riding in circles the sports drink must have worn off, and by the time james wittwer passed me (early 2nd lap i think) and i was feeling leg cramps i was disappointed, but well, he's young and fit, and has a cool looking new bike. chase dickens caught on and we rode together for a while - giving each other a much need push over the top of a couple hills. he was apparently having mechanical issues, that explains why he was back riding at my pace for a while. he eventually turned the afterburners on and left me. i slowed for the heed/water stop on the 2nd and 3rd lap hoping to replenish some much needed electrolytes. it helped a little, on my third lap i was able to grab a bottle going through, then i caught on with some 30+ guys and we took turns passing each other as leg cramps allowed.



i don't think any 19-29 riders passed me on the third lap, and i'm not sure when andrew devierscott passed. maybe he was in front from the line/crash/start. the entire 2nd/3rd lap, while suffering i kept thinking to myself that zeb might be catching up, he was wearing appstate NOT magic cycles, but imagining him in the magic cycles kit kept my legs turning. i did not want that pass to happen. the third lap went by and i was happy to cross the line. finished. most of the 3rd lap i spent looking for gels, bottles, bloks - anything other racers might have dropped that included cramp-fighting electrolytes. after the race some other people admitted they'd been doing the same. makes me feel less sketchy. results. they use a result system like at massanuttan (george willets i think).



i guess i finished 11th. thankfully there were more than 11 racers - but i did not stay to see official results. after the race, i sought after cold water and endurox, dry fresh clothes, and food.




thankfully the checkered pig BBQ was one of the big sponsors and darcy and i got our lunches and went to work. we hung out for a while with james, andrew, and zeb then over to see evan, tyler, and dan hemp who were all competing in the 6hour race. after some goodbye's we headed to wilkes - arriving in perfect time to have some La Fortuna #8:



arguably the best part of the weekend. i have leftover tacos for lunch and a few days to get ready for hobby park XC coming sunday march 20th. thanks for reading. more photos next time. jg

thursday: 70% chance of rain, then turning cold/windy and snowy. bike ride?? yes

so i woke up to a gloomy forecast. 70% chance of rain, high of 45, windy then snow. searching forecasts for every direction within a 1hr radius i determined collettsville would be my starting spot. head to work, build a wheel, hit the road.

get to work, with sam's expert guidance i built a front wheel for my road bike. selling my chris king/open pros to FLO allowed me to acquire a silver chris king front hub, thankfully it will match the powertap aesthetically and with another black mavic open pro and 32 spokes i was at work! spoke prep, gerd schraner, daft punk on pandora. magically, i got to a complete, tensioned, trued wheel in a little less than two hours. i'm happy with that. load up the car, destination collettsville. WAIT. its sunny. and warm, well 40+ degrees. bike ride!! so i walked back in the shop - to sam, shaw, and sarah's dismay ("we thought he was gone for the day!") and get changed. waterproof jacket - check. fender - check. embrocation - check. extra gloves - check. i managed to perfectly time it and get done before the rainsnow.

bundled up:


shades over helmet straps. rule #37. always:


red shoe covers!!


thanks for reading. feel free to comment. even if its just: wskgjhreklherjkghrejkghdrjklfgh. jg

thats that gourmet... cheese? yum.

so today was a good wednesday - it was 34degrees and rained non-stop reminding us it is actually winter - as if that's not enough, we have a chance of a dusting to 1" tonight. the bike shop was busy enough to cruise through the day, but not so busy we were pulling our hair out or anything. we got a special visit today from noah - and emerson, ray, and newton also darkened the doors.

so after our 'plat du frommage' saturday night we decided we'd DIY our own version. thankfully harris teeter and earthfare have plenty of gourmet cheeses and other supplies. see below:




we have: soppressata, proscuitto, fig preserves, apricots, cranberries, pistachios, walnuts, marcona almonds. cheese (from back): manchego, smoked gouda, brie, and jarlsberg. on our plates: sesame seed water crackers, olive oil saltines, green apples and canteloupe. simply yum.

now to check the weather for my day off. gotta pedal somewhere. thanks for reading. jg

2011 stumpjumper evo R 29. race ready?

so today was great: i got some finishing touches on the hardtail, proper xx shifter, white housing, brakes adjusted, sam approved. race weight with pedals/cages/computer mount is 21.0lbs.





work went well, it went by quickly, i got in a 1.6hr mtb ride out to the greenway to get last minute riding in. easy, fun, rolling around. we planned out doing two rides, tuesday and thursday.



well wednesday and thursday look dreary so tonight might be it. the bike worked well, wheels feel great, tires are perfect, brake pads/rotors settled in nicely, shifting is dialed, and it looks great. so the bike is ready - am i??

thanks goes to:
sam h - boone bike, for double checking my work.
matt shanly - best specialized rep boone bike's had. since kent at least
chris wyatt - specialized tire genius
jake/jacob - industry nine
kathy - highway two (fizik)
darcy - (teacher of the year!)for putting up with me and my bicycles

thanks for reading. jg

WC thursday, fun weekend, monday!

so thursday was fun. todd henne and i got down to warrior creek. we knocked out one good warmup lap then crushed a one hour lap. well, neither of us had cycling computers, or watches, or sundials but we were rolling!! we briefly ran into kristian jackson, jay womack and jim horton photoshoot-ing and kristian got some RAD photos (as usual). i am no smart enough to embed his photos on here, but check out his website, and buy some photos too: http://kristianjacksonphoto.com/enter

we followed up our meal with a quick trip to La Fortuna #8:



its quite possibly the best mexican food anywhere, but make sure to take cash $$. they don't take no stinking credit cards!

friday we did the art crawl thing, saw cool stuff at the turchin center, saw our friend jenny and her friend warren (kevin pogoloff's son). hung out at glug for a while then headed to the boone saloon for dinner. i went for nachos, darcy wisely picked beans/rice and grilled veggies. but the nachos were SOOOOOOOO good!!

saturday was cool, work was work. i got proper wheels/tires mounted to my hardtail and realized it will be about 21lbs race day. thats pretty exciting, but i've also been checking the registered riders link for danville this weekend and i'm shaking in my boots!! at least i'm convinced i'll look good fighting at the back of the race. saturday night we headed to banner elk to check out the louisiana purchase and had the best meal in a while. the 'plat du frommage' is reason enough to drive out there.

sunday it decided to rain snow most of the day. we managed to make a yummy breakfast: eggs, fake sausage, toast/waffles, almond butter. went for grocery shopping, secured our Banff Film festival tickets and snagged some olive oil from 'Art of Oil' in downtown boone. after getting home we setup bikes and rode trainers in the basement though to cancel out our glorious eating. hmm maybe i was the only one overeating... thankfully we had Glee on the laptop (not pictured) to make the hour go by quicker:



this morning i woke up, had some cereal and coffee and went straight to my workout. max and i decided i'd do a 20mins warmup, 2x tabata protocol and 5mins cooldown. tabata protocol is 8x 20sec MAX and 10sec recovery. so two of those 4mins pain caves and i'm in a daze trying to remember how many intervals have gone by and failing at simple math in my head. well anyways my joule documented the suffering:



after remembering my way to the stairs i went on for more breakfast and a shower, then off to stickboy and work. we setup a rad taco lunch today. thanks to chuck luddeke with sledgehammer charlies, sam, patrick and shaw for bringing together all the proper ingredients for wonderful mexican style pork (and brisket - one meat option would never be enough) tacos. patrick even brought authentic mexican soda pops!! what a great start to the week. hopefully i'll get it together, figure out proper eating again and get recovered in time for danville this weekend. updates soon. thanks for reading. jg