Cycling in the winter northland

The BBL season is coming along nicely, although we have had some weather issues which delayed our first ride with points available until this past Saturday. After getting back from 82 miles of riding in the morning, we packed up the car to drive over 1100 miles from Birmingham to Shell Lake, Wisconsin. We left at 3PM and made it into Shell Lake at exactly 10AM the next morning. No doubt about the weather here — cold and snowy! Here are pictures from the two rides I have done so far – a mountain bike ride, and an hour on the rollers.

Blast from the past

My wife was getting ready for a garage sale this Saturday when she found these two posters that I saved from my college racing days at Clemson University. I was a big follower of the principles laid out in Eddie Borysewicz’s book “Bicycle Road Racing”. One of the things that he recommends doing at the end of every season is to make a poster for the upcoming year with a box for every single day of the year.

The week to end all weeks was a 504.8 mile week Oct 14-20 (Monday-Sunday). I raced the Michellin Classic on Sat/Sun Oct 12-13 and then had a 504.8 mile week to end out the 1996 season. Check out these rides for that week:

Mon 10/14 – 25 miles easy
Tue 10/15 – 107 miles (first time to ride to Highlands, NC and back from Clemson)
Wed 10/16 – 54 miles
Thur 10/17 – 35 miles
Fri 10/18 – 38 miles
Sat 10/19 – 200 miles (to Brasstown Bald and back)
Sun 10/20 – 45.8 miles

Total mileage: 504.8 miles!

Other highlights are listed below and visible in the pics, too:

• Assault on Mt Mitchell 1995 – 21st place
• Morning resting heart rate of 36bpm
• Low weight of 115 lbs on March 18th, 1995
• A ride with the comment “fell-on-ice”
• NC/SC state TT 40k in 1:00:08 on August 25th, 1996
• My “pass-out on the bike” crash at UGA on April 20th, 1996