Going Places, New Faces

I guess my working out is starting to show the beginnings of dividends. Today I went and rode two laps at Rosaryville SP. The first lap was done in 1h:9m and the 2nd was 1h:11 min according to my cyclecomp. The GPS is a bit off as my first lap I didn't start it till almost a mile in. IN distance I got a measurement of 18.8 or so. I finished the entire ride in less than 2:30 which is pretty impressive to me as stops used to take me much longer. Basically I stopped once on each lap to eat a GU and then had to walk across 2 log sets. The final lap i did end up pushing the last hill but much better than my first ride where thats what I did that final hill on 1 lap. Once I got going and warmed up I felt decent only after mile 15 or so did the tiredness catch up a bit. Gotta continue to push myself for more endurance I guess. Met a guy in the lot there for his first ride, Mark. I let him lead off, caught him on the bastard climb before mile 4. I lead up till about 5 or so and let him pass. And he was gone...heheh. I coulda tried to keep up more but oh well, he said he only beat me to the lot by about 3 minutes. He ended after 1 loop. Cool guy.

At the gym, I am pushing myself more. Doing my A circuit a lot but working in bits of C also. B sucks, as often when I'm there the main room is in use and I can't use it. Oh well. I'm doing much better on push ups, my pull ups are up to 6. I did some box jumps yesterdya and they didn't seem to leave me in bad shape for today. Saturday I rode for an hour. Sunday I walked for half an hour, hoping to ride today.

Tommorow, I will probably try and do a full circuit of A again. We'll see.

Too Much Rest???

Feast or famine in all things it seems. Last week I was definitely famine on sleep, moderate on cycling/working out and such. This week I am determined to turn that around and have a good week of sleep and activity. Weather wise though I don't think there are going to be many rides, so it's probably the gym. I caught up on sleep majorly on sunday with almost 11 hours of beautiful sleep, monday I got another 9 I think.

At the gym yesterday I upped my A program weights on many of my exercises, where I am now doing

4x8 Step ups at 40#
3x10 Squat Explosions at 25#
Pushups I did 17 first set, then I did 14 and 12 respectively, thats a huge jump.
Pull ups 5 chin ups 4
3x10 Lunges at 25# (didn't increase this one..lefty is still too weak).
3 30Second Planks
Then i did 20 minutes of intervals on the stationary bike.

Today, its been feasting on Chili. My 2nd Tier boss brought in some great chili, spagetti, fixins, cornbread and brownies. I pigged down on 1 bowl of spagetti and chili then a bowl of just spagetti. UGH. Damnit.

I need a nap. :)

Rest?

Wednesday I met with the trainer for my final PT session at the gym for now. Unfortunetely one of the classes was using half the gear the trainer wanted me to, but he did show me what he wanted to do. So I only ended up doing 3 new exercises. The first was a push up on one of those big inflated rubber balls, next he had me hold myself stable as he would slap the ball and I had to use abs to stabilize myself. UGH! HARD!! The final exercise was the lateral box jump. 2 sets of 8 on the 18, and 4 on the 24. Do each side with at least a minute break between each half set.

Thursday I was originally hoping to ride Rosaryville but the rain left all trails way to muddy, so I went to Wakefield and rode the CCT, I did a 6 mile warm up then did 14.5 miles with the group ride towards rt 50. By the end my fingers were freezing and so were my poor big toes! There is a huge difference in wind chill between 7mph and 12-15 and open trail and hills/valley riding.

Rain Friday has unfortunately made it very unlikely that I will be able to ride much of anywhere fun by Sunday and maybe even Monday. We'll see. I'd love to go ride Rosary again.

Gonna try and spruce this thing up with some video/photo's and such over the next few days.

Grrr gotta go deal with a Heat problem @ home.

Fairland First Ride

So this morning I loaded up and went out to check out Fairland. Over all I'm going to give it a consideration somewhere between Cabin John and hmmmm Schaeffer? I dunno. At first the looping twisting unblazed trails were somewhat boring with a few notable exceptions, but I eventually found my way to the blue trail to the trail head suggested on the more site. Nice. Then I rode the entire blue trail out and back. Very Very nice on the out and not bad on the back though a bit climby but hey, its mountain biking. I was just tired. I guess the workout yesterday may have haunted me a bit. After a brief parking lot tour to find a dons-john I returned to the blue path to exit back to the other side. On the way down I finally came up on some horses. I followed a ways back for about a quarter of a mile. Finally they noticed me a switch back up and let me pass right near the paved path. I shot off and went away from blue where I thought they were going, I looped upto a point I'd hit earlier then found a recently built skinny trail section back towards the lake. Unfortunetly it was warming up speedily and I wanted to get done. As I was finishing that part I repassed the horse folk by about 50 yards and went on. I did a few laps of the lake and a couple runs down the path to the road. A quick final grind back to the lot, greeting a pair finishing up that i hadn't seen the entire 2 hours or so I was out.

Not bad, I got 12.3 miles on the cyclecomop. The gps came up with 1400 feet of climbing in 1h45mins of in motion time, covering 11.6 miles.

NOt awesome, but still. Not bad either. My legs are SORE! :)

215! Nice!!

Sunday wrap up

Well, I fell a bit off the pace after hitting Wakefield on Thursday Night, I did 8 miles in just under an hour there. Not bad considering I was feeling pretty wimpy and wiped out by the end on a whole 400ft of climbing. Egads. Thats like 1 climb at greenbriar. With J getting back in late Friday night I had cleanup duty at home waiting Friday afternoon, and saturday became a wash for the gym as I went home with the intention of a 15 minute power nap before working out only to zonk out for an hour or more. It was quite nice though. Today I intended to hit the gym early but errands, lunch, and other things kept me in till 4:30. I did get in a pretty solid set for not having been in since the painful monday session, though I did skip 1 set of lunges, my shoes were killing me. I wore the complete wrong shoes and consider myself lucky I did as well as I did.

For a change I also included 5-6 minutes of jumping rope. Holy cow, I get way to easily out sync on that, back as a kid I used to be able to go forever. When I was 11-12 I used to regularly go to a boxing gym/school in Phoenix and that was one of the regular activities. Though ultimately I'm glad I didn't get into really boxing. I'm already addle brained enough as it is.

My plan tommorow is to get up and go out early when J leaves and either hit Rosaryville again or maybe go check out Fairland. Not sure, fairland sounds a bit easier to hit but I'd like to hit Rosary and actually get a chance to REALLY improve my riding there on the outer Loop. I'd love to try for 2 laps, but who knows.

Off to cleanup the bike from Wed/Thursdays rides. Yucky!

New Places, New Faces

Last night i made the pilgrimage up to Greenbriar State Park Md, Damn thats quite a haul! I got up there a bit after 6 and wrestled my way into my gear in the car. Ugh. I need the bike gear booth! 3 other guys showed up at first. We took off just after 7pm and I knew ever after the first climb I was in trouble. The rockiness and the climbs there are simply much harder than any others I've ridden. Patapsco might be a good place to build up to riding greenbriar better/more often. I'm almost excited to challenge wakefield tonight. We'll see.

Damn fun descents for the most part, we did a lot of the red, some of the orange, and parts of blue and white. On a long climb I did get way seperated from the group and took a wrong turn and lost the group for 5-6 minutes. By the end I was doing a bit better on climbs but my legs were still worn out. We descended the dam to get out on time and that was a rush, my front break definetly could use and upgrade also before I go back. Around 8 miles total in the 2 hours we were out. UGH!!! I bet I hike-a-biked at least a mile maybe. SUCK!

I need to show some love to the house before J gets back tommorow, so I won't be super dissapointed if the ride gets cancelled tonight. I'll just go and pound for an hour on the stationairy bikes. Maybe i'll try and find a spinning class...hmmmm.

Clean as a Whistle

Monday night I started cleaning up my poor dirty neglected bike, it had 2 good rides on it since any cleaning and a bunch more since a major cleaning and when the drive train was upgraded.

So I pulled the chain and soaked in degreaser, giving it a good few minutes of shaking at times, pulled the rear wheel. The rear cogs received a very good cleaning, and I cleaned up the wheel in general, removing a lot of caked on crap. I then gave the cogs a couple good coats of teflon spray lube after covering the rear disc so as not to get anything on it. I then rinsed the chain and re-submerged it again in clean degreaser as the first wash was filthy. In between I worked the chain to get out more stuff and wiped off all the crap I could. I gave the bike a very thorough wipe down removing all dirt, grime and crud. I repositioned my cadence sensor and the magnets to get it working again. I also finally fully cleaned and replaced the bad o-ring on the non drive side of the crankset. It was fully of dirt and the ring was almost fully off, only the pedal keeping it on. I now have a spare o-ring, though they aren't quite wide enough, but I cleaned and put in new grease and it should be a huge improvement. I also finally found the spare mount for my GPS and fixed it to work right and mounted that up.

The chain recieved 2 treatments of lube one Tuesday Morning, the other Tuesday Evening. I also cleaned the jockey wheels on the Rear D. After installing it and cycling through all gears I wiped the chain down very well removing all excess, and the rag was still very clean! Lubed all the shifting cables and cleaned up and lubed the troublesome Front D as well as possible. Tightened and adjusted a few other things.

My frickin back is killing me and I'm not sure of my status for tonights ride. ARGH!@!!! Even after 2 advil it seems still a bit to sore....:( Guess I'll decide when I get closer to ride time. UGH.

Working for the Weekend

Busy weekend, even with J away. Man, where did the weekend go?

Friday before she left we went to Benihana for dinner, it was pretty entertaining but not as good as the one we liked in Tallahassee, no fire, and some rude customers. Almost everytable was having a birthday party, very noisy with the way they do it. No noodles either and the soup was an onion based one, but pretty good, I still like miso. J was packing after we got home till midnight. Ugh

Dropped J at the airport early and went to work. After work I had a new friends new year party to hit, and it was a good time, too bad I had to split at midnight. met a ton of cool people.

Sunday I got up at 7'sh for a 10:15 meetup and 10:30 ride up at Patapsco Park, my first ride up there. Very cool place, though I was hike-a-biking way more than i wanted to, plus I didn't keep up very well. I was suffering at like 6mph average. Some real mix of nice terrain and some hard climbs with some technical descents be it rocky or some drops. I think I rode a bit over 7 miles.

Today (err Monday), I rode out at Roseryville Park for the first time. Good group of guys also at this ride, the 4 of us made a bit stronger pace, I paced out at 7.6 as its a much faster feeling loop, even though the interior advanced loop took me forever as I had some bad mistakes in there on some simple stuff. I did take a few nice logs that I was actually happy with my attempts. Definitely gonna make that at least a monthly trip if I can. A bit far but not bad. Fun Fun loop. I hope to get J out there this spring. Only one hike a bike near the end do to being outa gas so to speak, and then slipped in the mud. Oh well.

Also did my new workout today, very simple but surprisingly hard. !0 Minutes of boxing on the heavy bag, 3 minutes of both fists, 3 of left only, 3 of right only, 1 final minute of both. The other exercise is 5 to 10 sets of 12 reps on each arm of kettle ball swing. You grab it one hand squat down and as you explode up out of the squat, you swing the ball up in the air. Also the trainer suggested that switching out the boxxing for jumprope for 10 minutes. All i know is I am pooped!!!

Time for shower and bed.

Is pain your friend???

This was my thought last night as I crawled under my covers before falling asleep last night. I was pondering this due to the fact I did my 2nd workout of my new type yesterday. I felt pretty good doing it after the 2 rest days (well I ran and cycled on Wednesday). Doing the step ups I only felt a bit weak near the very end of the last set. The explosion squats were fine. Did better on push ups and pullups also. Where I felt the pain was the lunges. My left leg was having problems when being the support leg. My quad there is simply weaker I guess. But by the end I was hurting. I cycled for 25 mins afterwards to break up the muscles a bit more. I was quite sore when stair climbing at home last night. DAmn laundry. This morning though I noticed my recovery was MUCH better. I'm hoping for hitting it again Saturday maybe. Though maybe not as I may try and ride Sunday.

But back to my point originally, what is that point when working out when you say enough. That when do you say, okay time to modify the workout? I felt not just lactic acid build up but some real soreness in my leg. We'll see how it goes today.

I also went by GNC and grabbed a bottle of whats now my favorite post workout protein drink, muscle milk. I also find there carmel peanut bars to be my favorite of several high protein bars I've tried.

Rocking the Scales, Week 2.

Alright at the start of my 2nd week of fitness I can look back on last week and see some real positives, and a few negatives.

Positives - Hit the gym 3 times last week. Ate better in general, subway on the 2nd day for the 2nd half of a foot long is rough. I can loose weight (218 as of yesterday). I also managed to not pig out and eat a whole box of lowfat cheeze-its in 1 sitting, I ate maybe 2 servings, at a time. Not great, but better.

Improvement Areas - I binge, therefore I am. Its tough for me to eat according to any normal meal plans, being as alergic as I am to most fruits and veg. Find supplements to that is more important than ever. Tomato juice and V8 are new ideas for this week. I eat WAY To much Peanut Butter. It's my general snack food of choice. I need to get some pickles also. 2% Cheddar cheese snacks are also on my shopping list. I need more snack options. I need to hit the gym consistently through out the week, not just early, I crapped out after thursday. I need to hit 4-5 times minus for each real ride.

REAL NEGATIVE - My bike is still in the FRICKIN SHOP! I'm pissed. Friday it might get done, more likely Saturday. If the part was ordered. Moron wasn't sure. No more city bikes, they are over priced on labor and kinda slack. I suspect their overhead is just too high.

2nd Week of Program and I am at 218.

I started a new weight training setup with my personal trainer at the gym. He gave me a first workout of
4x8 Step Ups @ 35 Lbs - 30 seconds rest
3x8 Explosion Squats @ 22.5 Lbs -45 Seconds
Push ups to exhaustion - 45 Seconds
Pull ups/chin ups (Goal 10) of either/then both. 30-45
2 Sets of Pushups for 20 seconds.30 seconds rest
3x10 Lunges @ ?? (20?) 45 seconds.

My shoulders are killing me today, my arms are a little sore. My legs are a bit sore. Gotta push it today when I hit the gym. Not hard but I need to loosen up as I plan to hit the same workout tommorow....I hope.

Fitness Drive

My wife and I are starting a new drive to improve our fitness here in 2008. Not really new year resolutions, but just in general. She wants to work towards her new goal weight and drop at least 20 more pounds. For me its a mixture of dropping 10-15 lbs ideally and improving my endurance for Mountain Biking. I want to think about racing Wakefield this summer. I want to strangely ponder the idea of racing Greenbriar this spring like I wanted to last year. My goal is to be able to go out on some of the Sunday epics this year and ride the whole damn 30-50 miles and keep up with the faster group. So really its 2 part. Up my endurance and increase my average ride speed by 1.5 to 2 mph.

Hu? 2mph...thats nothing. NOT. For me going out and running 7.5 last week at wakefield was hard as hell. I couldn't have done a 2nd lap at that pace. Though thats more about endurance. Being able to ride a solid 8-8.5 at wake would put me in good shape to do well at the wake races in the summer at least in terms for me.

The endurance is really the issue for me. I can go out and do 2 hour rides, where I cover 14 or more miles, no problem but I'm shot the next day. I want to go out and do 20's and be good for a lighter 10-15 the next day or go out and push 30-40 and only need a day recovery.

The other issue I want to work on is what I call spin up. It takes me sometimes upto 45 minutes to get REALLY warmed up sometimes on the bike where my legs no longer care about what is asked of them, they just do it to the best of their ability. Maybe its my first wall of "tired", I dunno. It just sucks, eventually I am able to just keep spinning, and basically ignore my legs complaints. Maybe its just mental toughness. Have to consider that part further.

So on 1-7-08 starting the program I was at 221. I've got a ways to go, then to hold it off forever, but I want this now more than ever. This is the right time. My fitness is going to have to carry on really for the rest of my life. I don't want to end up diabetic, or wearing size 38 pants or whatever.

Sping Suprise???

Well at the rate we had been going, I didn't think we were going to get a spring in winter like they did last year. However its not obvious I was wrong as rain. The last 3 days have been marvelous. Yesterday I went mud-riding along the C&O canal. It was muddy as hell, thankfully I brought my fenders along, I slogged thru at a tremendously slow 12mph. Add in my ongoing issues with my rear free hub (pawls that stick) and it wasn't a fun as possible ride. After the main ride, I road a lap around my wife's old neighborhood to get some hills in. Managed to hit 27mph in once section for a quick burst. Not bad. I need to do more off-trail riding to improve my distance conditioning I guess.

Friday sucked. I left work an hour early to go ride at Little Bennett. Alas a traffic jam took an hour and 45 minutes for me to clear 6 miles. ugh. I got there and we rode the last 45 mins together from 9:10 to 9:55'ish. Only got in slightly less than 4 miles.

Now my bike is in at city bikes for getting the rear hub serviced. Also discovered a broken spoke. Though at $25 to fix that I'm a bit peeved. I think last time I had a spoke replaced it was $15, at of all places, Spokes here in VA.

Wakey Wakey.

I was stoked to be out and riding again last night. I was kitted out, early and ready to ride. Or mostly ready. I prepped the bike and a few others were ready and the ride boss took us out on a bit late pre-ride at 6:20'ish. We road a LOT of the trails in about 25 mins and it was sweet. It was all frozen we could ride the whole thing. Nice! It had been a while since we could ride much/any of phase 2.

I went back out with the casual group, Punga was leading but he was blowing us all away, after intermediate passed us we told him to hit the bricks :P and the slow ride slowed down. Over on phase 2 I bit it on 2 switchbacks in a row. I've never had problems with either of these and blam. After riding more of 2 we transitioned back into the woods and after a small climb. POW. My damn chain broke. Fortunetly it wasn't under load but it still sucked. I had to walk/coast out. Took me 10 mins to catch my group as at first I thought it was just a dropped chain. I couldn't get the new quick link in and said it was time to roll home. Everyone else rolled back in then. The 20 degree temps were assuring a short night. Probably an hour 20 to an hour 30 for most rides that night. The trails were blazingly fast though and that was cool.

My left knee/lower leg is a bit messed up from my first crash which happened on the preride in a really st00pid way.

May try and ride at little bennett tonight, depends on if the wife is otu with friends and when I can get off work. Also gotta see if my guy here can do a quick adjustment on my rear derail, as it appears the cable stretch is mostly done now.
Adn damn, stupid sram pc-991 is pissing me off for breaking. It isn't even hollowpin. The damn plates just pulled away from the pin. Gonna try and get a swap out maybe sunday or monday.

Riding Again

Finally got a ride in last night at Wakefield with my new equipment setup. SWEET!!!! The lake boots make a huge difference my toes were only a little cold. With toe warmers the should work down into even 0 degree conditions.

I was actually ride leader last night.....uhhhh wtf. We started out with 4 riders, picked up another. 1 Guy bailed a bit after an hour, The next guy went out after another 20 mins. We last 3 went and did another half hour. Cheers to Daniel, Rich, Dave, Alex. We final 3 did a total of about 8.75 miles.

I was pretty happy with my riding for being sick and off the bike due to rain/etc for 2 weeks. My legs felt moderately fresh and I spun pretty well most of the time except for the third spin up to the top to hit the berms. We stayed mostly out of phase 2 except for a couple of mins and a quick ride up the hill on the access road/trail.

My frickin gps mount broke and fortunetly I realized before I lost the damn thing. Thank god!

Anyways back to work for me. Happy Commercial-mas!

Trailwork is good for the soul.

Sunday I finally made the trip up to Gambrill's for a trailwork day. I was a bit worried at first that not many would be up there with it rainy and cold, but we ended up with 12 hardcore workers. A few people I've ridden with before including Todd, Dave, Julie, Joe and some others. New folks included clyde, frank, charlie, and a few others. We got a ton done and finished up with some beers before we tripped down to Brewers Alley, pretty good food and the oatmeal stout was nice.

Today I was going to go for a ride in the afternoon but the rain kicked back up and back in I went. Opted for a Run and ride at the gym. The new running shoes I picked up this morning were great. Very nice.

Friday the wyf and I went to a champagne tasting. It was pretty good, we ended up with 2 nice bottles in the $30 range. I liked a couple of the nice $60 ones too. I also picked up a 6pack of Full Moon, Blue Moon's winter ale version. Very Nice!

Black Hills Friday Night Lights Inagural Edition

First Black Hills Friday Night Lights was last night. Damn good time for the most part. Though at the end I was bonking majorly. But back to the beginning.

Got there a bit later than I wanted do to Traffic, Spending to long BS'ing with Phil at G-Town Cycles, and missing the West Old Baltimore Rd Turn off. Ugh. So I had to change in the car and that was exciting as usual...And cramped. But 15 minutes later I was ready to go.

New cassette check, new chain check, new rear tire (Some big tears phil spotted) check.

We started off as one large group, and rode the first short section together. At that point we realized we needed to split. A fast and not so fast, with a few of us straggling the fast, as tweeners. Our group was led by Jim with Yeuq, Mark, Harry and myself bringing up the rear. We tackled Hard Rock and looped around to the boat house.

We then rolled onto the HMC trail all the way to the big bridge. During the last section we lost a rider and that sucked. He was behind me then he wasn't. When I got to the end we all turned back. No sign of him at the first lot and so 2 guys went back to double check while I called the ride leader. The county sheriff patrol stopped to check on us and thought we were crazy but cool for riding. They didn't care about our permit even. hahaha. A bit later the ride leader called back having seen our missing rider heading back to the lot by the road. I call the search party back. After they return we take off.

Well they do, but I'm burnt and frozen. Got way to cold during the 12 minute plus stop and I can't crank well anymore. So I convince Harry to head back the "easy" way back. Roads to the main center lot. But there are 1 major 1 minor grind back. UGH. We made it back in about 9:48'ish. But I'm toast. A quick change of shoes helps, my poor toes are frozen and barely feel my feet. Load gear and head home. Time for a final purchase for now.

A pair of Lake Men's Winter Mtn Biking Boots. Ahhhh warm feet and toes ho!

Ended up doing near 10 miles with a moving pace of 8.3mpg average. Pretty cool. Without that stop I probably would have gotten 12 or so and maybe been a bit faster.

First Night Ride at Wakefield.

So this Thursday, I did my first night ride out at Wakefield Park in Springfield, Va. It was a good time. Got out there nice and early and spent an 40 minutes gearing up, adjusting equipment. A new pair of gloves, socks, and headwarmer. Very nice. I now just need my new fleece tights and I'll be almost good to go for the season.

Did a little preride to warmer up and see how things would go. And it was pretty damn good. Put on a extra pair of socks and was good to go. I went out with a nice casual group, we had 8-9 riders through out. We made an average pace of 7.1 according to my cycle computer odometer. We went down to the creekside trail, then climbed to the power lines. The most of us hit the bowl. We then rode the trail back up and out to the parking lot. We then headed over to Accotink and rode most of the trails over there. A bit more challenging. We kept having people not make it up and out of stream crossings. We had a woman along who'd never mountain biked before excluding one light trail ride and never night rode before. She kicked ass and rode hard! I was impressed.

I did head over to kilroy's but it was too noise and smokey and my wife bailed on her late class so I headed home.

Maybe there will be a post ride stop at DFH after Black Hills tonight.

Descente Wombat Gloves Review

So I went out yesterday and picked up a pair of Descente Wombat gloves. Pretty darn nice. I like the knit cuff, the construction of the main seams. Not sure how I feel about the grip material but i bet it will last well. The snot wipers on the back of the thumb(s) are nice and soft. Temp wise I think they are pretty good. I was riding in the mid-40's last night pretty comfortable excluding my already damaged finger. So I did the poor man's warmer and took the glove off and a few breaths into it later jammed my fingers back in. Much better. So now I know I just need to pre-warm them. I'm now thinking about what kind of liner glove I want. My other bone to pick is the the thumb length is a bit short.

Now I also need to deal with my cold feet issue. I wore a pair of Smartwool socks under a pair of snowboarding socks and it was better. I just can't find a pair of booties that will cover my shoes correctly yet. ARGH.

Colder than a Well Diggers @ss in Alaska

Last night here in the Nations Capital Area was our first REALLY REALLY cold night. Even right now the outside is reading 26Degrees at 9AM.

So last night we had the Friday Night Lights at Little Bennett Park. It was cold at the start and damn cold by the end. I was pretty happy with my warmth level in general. The 2 dark spots were gloves/hands at first and shoes/toes at the end, err well by 2/3'rds of the way through. I should have sprung for these at HudsonTrail before the ride.

http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/596/7695/
http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/596/11622/ - These look good too!

I mainly went there looking for some biking booties to help keep the feet warm, it was really only my toes that were cold, and that was from swelling I think. I need to adjust my shoes a bit out for winter near the front.

http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/82/9180/
http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/82/12616/

It was a damn nice ride otherwise. Though a bit tricky as a ton of leaves hid a few tree limbs/etc down in the trail. I only partially dumped once though I had to dab a few more times than usual. The full moon made it really bright and nice. By the end of the ride the grass was frozen and the dew on trees was also putting a white frosting on everything. I was back from the 3 guys a lot of the longer sections and it lent a nice feel of being a bit out on my own. Though I hung in pretty well on a couple of the big climbs. Nice for not riding much.

My layers were as such. Lower - Thermal LongJohns, BikeShorts, legwarmers over the LJ's and then a long pair of snowboarding socks. Up Top I had a Thermal LJ shirt with a riding jersey over that with a tech fleece thermal over that then finally a HaleyHansen jacket shell (No liner). I wore a neck warmer/buff but i used a new breath mask and that served as my earwarmer/face mask and it worked pretty well. If only my nose wasn't so runny! So a new pair of gloves heavier than my 661's and a pair of shoe covers and I'll be good to go down to that level again.

I hate my Car, Somedays

Monday was hellish. Rain delayed my car inspection for almost 5 hours, and I didn't get my car back till 3pm. UGH. Then I find out I have 1000 of stupid repairs to do before it's street legal in MD! DAMN IT! How frickin annoying. I may try and do some of the work myself. I dunno its annoying. I want to find a job closer to home where I can walk/ride/metro commute in some fashion.

Afterwards I did pickup my bike at GTown and the new dérailleur was installed and it looks sweet and shifts even better. Nice, quiet and sure. I didn't test it too much but preliminaries show that it is better. I upped to an 07 X9 from the 04/05 X7.

I also got a few pieces of new cold weather gear in but the tights I ordered were too damn small. So they are going back.

And its raining like crazy and it looks like the last Schaefer Farm Night ride is probably gonna be a wash.