Two Wheel Blogs

Wednesday 7.21

I had great plans when I left work today.

Normally, I do the Chesterfield Valley ride on Wednesday nights. But not tonight. I'm running the Mud Mountain cross country 5K this Saturday, so I decided the Valley ride was more workout than I needed.

Nonetheless, I had great plans when I left work this evening. The high school cross country team would be working out at the course at SIUE tonight. I considered riding the Belk Park loop, then heading out to the course to do a little light running. Or I could ride my cyclocross bike out to the course, do some riding on the single-track trails, then do a little running. Or... You get the idea. I had options. And they all involved either riding or running or riding and running.

I did neither. The only thing I ended up riding was the couch. Here's why...

STOP! Back Up The Bus

I've been blogging for just over a year now, and my pattern is this: if I ride, I blog about it. It may be short, it may be boring, but I write something. Okay, occasionally I've missed, and sometimes I've combined rides into one entry (like this one), but I do it. My last post was on 7.11, the last day of my mid-summer vacation. Here's what I've been up to since then.

Monday 7.12 ~ Mueller Road ride with Steve O'Neal and James Alferman. We took turns doing 2-mile pulls and covered the 30-mile route at a 20 mph pace. This was a good, hard ride, and I was lucky to be able to hang on the whole way.

Tuesday 7.13 ~ I did a 4-mile run on the Nickel Plate. (I'm training for the Mud Mountain cross country 5K, so I alternate riding and running.)

Wednesday 7.14 ~ Normally, this would have been a Chesterfield Valley ride. But as I would be leaving town the next day, I decided to go home and ride the Belk Park loop. This got me home earlier to pack and spend time with my family.

Thursday 7.15 ~ I spent 8 hours driving from Edwardsville to Bancroft, Iowa, where my dad lives. Around 7:00 p.m., I stopped to do a 3-mile run. Some grown children sneak a last cigarette before visiting a parent. I sneaked a run.

Friday 7.16 ~ I drove up to my hometown of Fairmont, Minn. I stopped by The Bike Shop to visit Larry Vogel, and spent about an hour listening to him tell some amazing stories about when he first got into cycling in the late '60s and early '70s. He was going to the Twin Cities the next day and offered that I could watch his shop for him, "Y'know, in case anybody stops by."

One hot summer day when I was in 13 or 14, Barry Wilfhart and I decided to ride our 10-speed bikes down to the Iowa state line. Barry and I were town kids, used to riding our bikes around town. Riding the dozen or so miles to the state line seemed like a long distance to us. Our bikes were of the heavy hardware store variety (mine came from Coast to Coast) and must have weighed 20+ pounds. Of course, we didn't have water bottles, so by the time we reached the state line, we were spent. We didn't have any money either. The proprietor of the small liquor store at the state line offered that we could drink from the faucet behind the store. When we went out back, I saw two quarters on the ground by the soda machine. Sodas cost 25 cents then, so we used out newfound funds to buy two cans of 7up, our sports drink. Replenished, we rode back to Fairmont feeling much better than when we arrived at the state line.

After visiting with Larry, I set out for the state line. This time, I was riding a lighter bike, carrying water, and was in better physical shape than my teenage self (kind of a sad commentary there). Having reached the Iowa border, I turned and headed north, riding through town and out past I-90, the northernmost edge of Fairmont. Having ridden the length of my hometown, I then set out to ride the breadth of it, riding from the western edge to the east. I covered about 45 miles in less than three hours. In all, a good day's ride.

Saturday 7.17 ~ I got up early and headed out to Cedar Creek Park. When I was in high school in the early '70s, the park (or "The Hills" as it was known) was the site of weekend keggers. Today, it would be my running course. I've only run in Fairmont a couple of times before, and I've never run on cross country there before. They have a nice Frisbee Golf course at the park, so I ran its nicely mown paths.

After that, I suited up and set out to ride to Blue Earth, a town about 18 miles to the east. Growing up, I had family in Blue Earth, so I have memories to time spent there. While I get back to Fairmont occasionally, I've not visited Blue Earth. So that was today's destination.

I still remember one glorious summer afternoon from my childhood. It was spent at the family farm of my relatives who lived just outside of Blue Earth. It was one of those Norman Rockwell afternoons, filled with playing in the hayloft of the barn and catching frogs in the creek that ran behind the farm. When I reached Blue Earth, I rode through straight through it towards the country on the other side. I was trusting instinct and hoping that maybe, just maybe, I would somehow magically just find the right road that would take me back to the farm. As my odometer approached the 30-mile mark, I was surrouned by farmland, but I had no idea if I was anywhere near the farm or whether I'd even recognize it if I saw it. I turned around and headed back into town.

Quite by accident, or chance, I found my way to the Blue Earth cemetery. If I still have relatives living in Blue Earth, I don't know about it. But I do have relative buried there. I soon found myself standing at the foot of their headstones. Afterwards, I stopped for a mid-morning coffee, then headed back to Fairmont. On the way, I stumbled across the Unity Bike Trail, a short stretch of trail than runs along the Blue Earth River out to the rest stops by I-90. I wasn't long, but it was lovely. I covered 57 miles that morning, a personal record for riding around my hometown.

Afterwards, I cleaned up and headed down to the Bike Shop, which just happens to be right next to my ultimate destination for the evening, the Sisseton Lake Saloon. The reason I was in my hometown was to get together with friends to play music outside the saloon that evening in memory of a friend, Mark "Pete" Nelson. Mark passed away two years ago. But during his 50 too-short years of life, he touched all of us with his music and his good nature. Tonight, we were getting together to play music the way we used to do with Mark. But that was later.

First, I opened up the Bike Shop, dragged the bike stand outside, clamped my bike in it, and started to give it a much-needed cleaning. Throughout the afternoon, I cleaned my bike as next door my friends set up the sound system, tuned up, and began playing. Two people stopped by. First was a young couple looking for directions to the local water park. Later, as I was closing up the shop, was Reed. He rode up on his Raleigh road bike to pick up a new Brooks saddle. A leather worker who used to make Western saddles, he once walked/jogged from Canada to Iowa in 27 days -- with a prosthetic right leg. Interesting guy.

After that, I racked my bike, grabbed my mandolin, and headed over to the Lake Sisseton Saloon to play tunes all night long. The music started around 5:00 p.m. I joined the fray around 6:00 p.m. and played for four hours, under an approaching storm made us take down the sound system. It pass quickly, and we got out the instruments again and spent the rest of the evening playing to the open air. Aroun 1:30 a.m., I called it quits and headed for bed. It had been a long, full day.

Sunday 7.18 ~ I wanted to sleep late, but couldn't. Instead, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. Worse, as soon as I was awake, I remembered that I had neglected to make the necessary arrangements to cover my not being at church that morning. This realization, as the necessity to do something about it, would prevent me from getting back to sleep. So I got up, packed, got in the car, and headed north for I-90, then east past Blue Earth towards Albert Lea, then south on 35, now retracing the route I took to get there. Thus began another 8-hour drive down through Iowa and Missouri to Edwardsville, where I arrived at 2:00 p.m. After unpacking, I went for a run on the Nickel Plate, then cleaned up and went over to friends' for dinner.

Monday 7.19 ~ Mueller Road with Steve and James again. And again, we repeated our pattern of 2-mile pulls. Tonight was good 20-mile workout. Unfortunately, it's a 30-mile route. My first pull was okay. My second, a little better. My third, a wind-assisted pull down Portage, was a pleasure. I rested and recovered during James's pull, but I found myself having to work hard to maintain contact during Steve's pull. Mind you, we were rolling at around a 24 mph clip, but still, I should not have had to struggle so to keep up. I took one more pull, which got us to the 20-mile mark. When James took over, I dropped off the back. I just couldn't summon what was necessary to kee up. So I finished out the ride as best as I could on my own. I felt bad that I couldn't hang with the pack, but I just did not have it in me.

Tuesday 7.20 ~ I started the day with a run on the Nickel Plate. I'm tapering towards race day, so it was only a 3-miler.

Wednesday 7.21 ~ Which brings us back to today. As I'm driving home from work, I'm planning my evening's workout: ride, run, or ride and run. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm is moving in from the south. Lightning strikes flash as I roll along on 270. And gradually, fatigue starts to overtake me. The closer I get to home, I become aware of how tired I feel, no doubt the result of the past week finally catching up with me. As soon as I got home, I headed for the couch, closed my eyes, and slept for at least an hour.

Before I posted this, I checked my workout log, to which I have been dutifully posting all my physical activities. I found that my last rest day was Thursday 7.1. That means I have run or ridden for twenty straight days, in addition to the drive up to Minnesota and back. No wonder I feel tired.

The 5K race is Saturday. I plan to do a short 2-miler tomorrow. I plan to do nothing on Friday. And on Saturday, I plan to run the cross country course as best I can. My goal is to go sub-24:00. The closer I am to 23:00, the happier I'll be.