Get Your Jerseys HERE!

Okay, here's the low-down on the jerseys. I'm still working out pricing, but I know it will NOT be more than $60, shipping INCLUDED. Not a bad price for a nice jersey! If you want to order one, please leave me a comment on this post with how many and what sizes (race or club cut is available, just state your preference). I do have minimums to meet, so if there's not enough interest, I won't take your money and we'll all just go our merry ways. But please, tell your friends, your cycling friends, your friends who have battled cancer or know someone who has. Let's raise some money and help LAF and FatCyclist to beat this disease.

Jersey design

Here's the preliminary design. There's room on the sleeves and the sides for sponsorship opportunities (leave a comment with your email address if you're interested). Price is not yet firmly nailed down, but hopefully will be $50-60, which is a great price for any jersey, and this one's for a great cause. Stay tuned for more info!

Raising Funds

Okay folks, this is where I beg shamelessly for donations.

I've decided to jump in and set up a fund raising site with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I want to start small and raise $500 to help folks with cancer battle the disease. I've set up a fundraiser website here, where you can go donate.

Also, in the next day or two, I'm going to be selling some sweet cycling jerseys and donating the proceeds to LAF as well. I'll include ordering details with the design when I post it, so check back soon and often. I promise they'll be uber-cool. I think they'll go for $50 each, which is a great deal for a cycling jersey at anytime, fund raising philanthropy aside!

Thanks all!

Fatty's a lucky guy

Some of you may know that I love to read FatCyclist's blog. He's a guy who's crazy about cycling, from right here in Utah, and he writes a great and funny blog. Last December, he wrote a funny post about how he'd be a great pro cyclist and how Johann Bruyneel should let him try out for Team RadioShack. Well, Johann read that and a lot of cool stuff happened, including Fatty being able to go to the Tour of California this past week and ride in the team car during the time trial stage. How awesome is that!?

He also got the opportunity to meet a bunch of the riders on the team and get his picture taken with them. That all sounds cool and everything, but I don't think I want to do that. After all, at 6'1" and over 200 lbs (and shrinking, slowly), I'm huge compared to those 125-lb-dripping-wet pro cyclists. I think I'd just look fat. :)

Ghost Town Century report

Saturday I woke up to a very wet morning at 5:30, and proceeded to get dressed in my cycling garb anyway. My ride was due to arrive at 6, and I wanted to have something to eat before he got there. One PB and Honey sandwich later, along with a little Powerade, and I was good to go. The drive from West Jordan to Tooele was wet, snowy/sleety, and really intimidating. I did NOT want to ride 100 miles in that kind of weather, especially since I had (have) a pretty nice head cold. Fortunately, when we got off the freeway in Tooele, the precip had lightened up a bit, and by the time it came time to start, it had stopped.

We get to the staging area and check in, and I opt for the water bottle instead of the cycling socks... and it's a good thing I did. When I got back to the car to pin on my bib and change shoes, etc., I realized that the two water bottles I had filled at home with powerade were... still at home on the kitchen table. Oops. So I filled the one water bottle with water, and hoped the aid stations would be frequent enough to supply refills. Fortunately, they were, thanks to the cool weather I didn't drink as much as I otherwise would have.

Anyway, We were off, passing more than being passed in the first 10 miles until we arrived at the first rest stop... which wasn't even set up yet. It was early enough that I was still feeling fresh and still had plenty of water, so we soldiered on. The second rest stop was at the thriving metropolis of Ophir, Utah. It's a little tiny mining town at the top of a steep, beautiful little canyon. I didn't enjoy the 4 mile climb that averaged 7% and topped out at 15% grades, but I sure enjoyed the stop. I ate a granola bar and a baby potato with salt, and filled the water bottle with Powerade. Then I got all zipped up for the descent back down the canyon, which was fast and fun, but COLD. Temps at this point weren't yet to 40º. Aid station number 3 was in Fairfield, another 23 or so miles away. That was the "lunch" stop, where they had Subway sandwiches and chips and other goodies. I opted for a PB & J on a tortilla... surprisingly yummy. The route from here headed back westward into Tooele County (Fairfield is just over the Utah County line... think west of Eagle Mountain). This is where the wind picked up and it got downright miserable. We even got hailed on for a few minutes -- just little tiny stuff, but still... it kinda stings. We also hit some rolling hills, which slowed our pace down to about a 15 mph average. Here we hooked up with a couple of other riders, one of which turned out to be a Cat 2 racer who offered to pull us the rest of the way in if we'd help keep his wife out of the wind. It was her first century ride too, her previous long ride having only been 40 or so miles. Yikes. So we gladly accepted the offer, and I was happy to settle into a draft for the next 15 miles or so to the 4th rest stop, which was basically a truck pulled over on the side of the road with snacks in the back.

A short stop and we were off, finally out of the direct headwind into more of a side/tailwind for a couple of miles as we headed north from Faust towards Rush Valley. Fortunately, except for the couple of minutes of hail, we had stayed precipitation-free. There were still 4 of us working together, which helped to minimize the effects of the wind. Garrett, our Cat 2 racer, would slow on the inclines to let his wife catch up, which I was grateful for. It meant it took us longer to finish than I had initially wanted to, but at the same time it kept me feeling like I had plenty of energy in the tank. We picked up a 5th rider into our group before the Rush Valley rest stop at mile 74. For the next section I took a couple of turns at the front riding next to Garrett and chatting with him about races, etc. At about mile 88 the hours and hours of rolling hills and climbing paid off, and we hit the descent. This is where our little peloton, now numbering 6, split up. I went with the faster group, and we quickly formed a nice little rotation of 3 of us all taking very short pulls, cruising down the hill working together at 30 mph. Our paceline lasted until we hit Grantsville at mile 95. Once into town our speed dropped of necessity and we just cruised and chatted... wondering what happened to the rest of our group. The three of us pedaled on in to the finish, with my total riding time being 6 hours, 28 minutes. Slower than I wanted, but then the course was hillier than I expected and it was a windy day, which didn't help. 105 miles total, over 4800 feet of climbing, with an average speed of 16.24 mph.

It was fun, but I don't know if I'll do another century ride. I just don't see the value in the registration. There's no clock, there's no "race", it's just a ride, and I can do that anytime. Sure the rest stops are nice, but $10 and a few well-planned convenience stores would have been just as nice. No, I think the next ride I pay money to ride in will have a clock and a race associated with it. I'll let you know what that'll be...

SLC Marathon Bike Race --- er, I mean, Tour

So I volunteered this year to ride the Bike Race.... er, I mean "tour" that precedes the SLC Marathon. I was a "bike marshal" which basically means ride for free, and make sure everyone obeys the rules and offer assistance where needed. Fortunately, everyone was on their best behavior and nobody crashed or anything, and I got to have a really really really good time.

I had assumed that the bike marshals all rode toward the back of the pack to pick up stragglers, etc., but when I got there, I was told that we were to just ride along with basically anywhere we wanted to. So I headed to the starting line and tried to get as close to the front as I could, which was still a couple hundred people back, I'm sure. Anyway, they blow the horn and we're off! Well, not really. There was a lot of near-misses as people tired to clip into their pedals and get going without running anyone over, etc. But by the time we actually crossed the starting mats, things had worked themselves out and we were able to ride.

The pack took a while to gain speed, and I was passing people right and left as fast as I could. It's not a race, it's a tour, but all that means is 1) there's no "clock" and 2) you don't have to pay for a racing license. Oh, and 3) anyone and everyone can ride it. It's "family friendly." Anyway, for the first half of the course, there wasn't anything organized developing, everyone was basically riding at their pace. I did a lot more passing than being passed, occasionally jumping on to someone's wheel as they passed me, then using that pull to pass them. It wasn't until about the halfway point on 6200 South until I was cruising along and looked behind me to notice there were a half dozen people on my wheel. "Okay," I thought. "I'll pull for a while." I tried to put in little surges, but they stayed with me. "Looks like we might have a paceline developing here. Cool." Just after we turned onto Van Winkle, our little paceline, which I was still leading, got passed rather quickly in succession by two pacelines of guys in matching club jerseys (for the most part). I thought "Now that's what I'm talking about!!" and jumped on, along with 3 or 4 from my paceline. Which was fine, because I wasn't pulling anymore. Our group grew as we caught up to other packs of riders in front of us, and soon it seemed like there wasn't anyone in front of us, though I'd find out later there was. There were probably 25 or 30 of us in this little peloton as we turned off of Van Winkle onto 45th, then again onto 5th East. Those quick turns shed a few off the back, but the group was still cruising along at about 26 mph up 5th. About 33rd or 27th South someone decided to attack, and our group split in two. Fortunately, I was able to go with the "breakaway" and keep up with the first group. I hung with them until we turned onto State St. and began heading up the dreaded "hill". At that time, our smaller group splintered again and I fell back with a couple others. As we meandered around to the Gateway and crossed the finish line, I was surprised to a) have been handed a medal, and b) to see there were fewer than 100 of the over 1000 riders that started that had already finished. It took me 1:04:xx, which put me at an average speed of 22.5 mph for the 25 mile course. And it was a BLAST.

This experience showed me that maybe I would after all be able to hang with a peloton in a real bike race... at least with the cat 5 crowd. So now I'm looking for a couple of bike races to enter, probably starting with the Rocky Mountain Raceway criterium series... Bike racing -- er, I mean "touring" -- turned out to be sooo much funner than I thought it would!

Feeling better, ramping up

3 1/2 weeks until my century ride... Did I mention I'm riding the Ghost Town Century ride instead of the East Canyon Road Race? I figure I'll get a couple of good months of real training in before attempting a real "race"... so for now it's just the century ride, on May 1. Then there's a road race in the fall I'd like to train for.

10 days ago I went for a ride with a group from the old neighborhood from Sandy up to the top of Little Mountain pass. The mountain didn't seem so little to me then, though. I even surrendered to the granny gear (triple chainring) right toward the end. It didn't help that I didn't know where the end was. It was a good ride, almost 50 miles, and it gave me some confidence for the century ride. Running has slipped to almost nothing at this point (March - 19.3 miles run, 214 miles biked), but that's okay. The running will make a comeback slowly but surely this summer as lunchtime rides are relegated to odd-numbered days only.