Two Wheel Blogs

Let me start by saying I will NEVER again race a race like Syllamo on a fully rigid bike. In fact after the race I vowed never to ride a rigid bike again ever, period. Let me start by saying that for some reason someone told me not long ago that Syllamo wasn't near as hard as Ouachita. That person was a little mistaken. Syllamo's Revenge made Ouachita feel like child's play. Don't get me wrong, Ouachita was a challenge, but this was the hardest race, hardest ride, hardest effort I've ever put out in my entire life... Syllamo's Revenge went down with a bang in 08, and I absolutely can't wait till next year.

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It's hard to believe that all the anticipation, excitement, and nervousness of my first "big" race of the year is now over. Another race under the belt, one that will find it's way onto my calendar for many years to come. I trained, well, I wanted to train... Usually I was left to the road due to wet trails, but that's just been the way its been. The 2008 Ouachita Challenge Sunday was the longest mountain bike ride I've done this year. It was all good though, I was fresh, and thank god because if I had a repeat performance of last weeks 6 hour race, I would be in for a long day.

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What a week. This was by far the best riding week I've had all year. It all really started with Wednesday's 2x20's, and it all wrapped up with todays hammer fest.

I'm already loving March alot more than February. Two awesome days of weather. February ended great with Friday's weather being similar to todays. I got a great road ride in at Jeff. I HAD to take off work early and get out and enjoy it. I got some great hill work in, and some good hard riding. All in all I put in just under 2 hours of riding, with about 32 miles total. It was the first road ride of the year that I truely had an awesome time. No music, just the humm of my tires on the road and the wind in my face. It was a windy day, no doubt.

So Unit's had some interesting blogs about his feelings lately. So here's mine. Winter's a cruel cruel thing, specially here in Missery. That's Missouri for all you non-natives. The weather this year has been just wacky, and it's left me with few and far between rides. The weather has finally gotten cold enough that the ground is mainly frozen, but days like today warm up just enough to turn trails into soup. So it was the road for me today, yup, a nice easy road ride... right....

You got it,it was a hot one today. They say it actually might get hotter coming into the week. Yay! Today I had plans on going to Landahl to get a nice 3 hour ride in. Half of what will be going down next week. I just couldn't contain my excitement on the way up when my car themometer read 102. I had brought a full camelback, and a full water jug of water. I figured it would at least be good in getting me used to this weather.

Over at Slowtwitch, Mark Sisson has another article which is critical of endurance training. This one is a little more detailed with supporting evidence and a lot rings true to me. However, the one point he makes about low aerobic activity building capillaries is a bit ambiguous. Does he mean the opposite is contrary? That above low aerobic will destroy capillaries? If that is true than endurance athletes would have poor capillary networks and this is clearly not the case.