Millersville Road Race

I got 6th in my race. I'm still needing upgrade points so I did the 4/5 race. If I would have gotten a top 3 finish I could have upgraded to Cat three but I decided to really try a break away instead of conserving energy. I'm now four points away from an upgrade I believe.

I almost crashed twice in the first five miles. The field was ridiculously wild to start. Some guy flew into a curve way to fast and basically forced me to push off the guard rail to stay upright and then later I got pushed into the grass and had to bunny hop back onto the course. It pissed me off early so I knew it was going to be a good day. My girlfriend was watching so I chose to break away from the field on the hill that she was at the top of. I was able to solo for about 3 miles or so. It felt grand, it wasn't that long but it was fun.

The sprint at the end was crazy. I was beat so I attacked on the hill right before the finish to open up some room for me. About 100 meters from the finish 5 guys passed went by then BAM!!! I heard like three cracks and then my back wheel got thrown out but I saved it and kept sprinting. I think I was the last guy to survive and everyone else behind me went down. All the injuries were pretty minor but there was a lot of bloody bodies.

race reports

Jon, we need a race report from your exploits this past weekend.

Anyone else racing?

(You can read about my race at Poolesville here.)

1st Official Summer TNR Challenge

It is a sad day but I believe I will be missing the TNR tomorrow. This is a formal challenge to anyone who would like to beat me. I have not lost in a long time and I believe this would be a good week to develop some tactics to defeat me. Just don't forget, I have no weaknesses. LETS GO SHIP!!!


oops: This is wild

Cargus Criterium

Well since it was fathers day I decided to race not once but twice! I drove out to Lancaster teammate-less at 7a.m. It wasn't too early but I couldn't sleep the night before. I've been getting better at sleeping and not getting to hyper but Saturday night I tossed and turned for hours. Finally a late night game of NHL 07 at 1:00am settled me down (I lost). Now to the racing- Game plan for 3/4 race-sit in pack and maybe get in a break late
4/5 race- shut-down break aways

9:50- 3/4 race - Started nice, jockeyed up well to top 20 out of a 60+ field. Around lap five a break started to form, I hammered away and got in it, soon caught. Another break forms I hammer up to it, soon caught again. By lap 10 I was already spent, I again failed to even come close to following my plan. I'm still to immature for the 3/4 category. A nice break formed by lap 15 or so and I just sat in the group and that's where I finished.

1:30ish - 4/5 race- I sat under a tree and watched the older gentlemen race as well as all the Cat 4/5 racers warm up. I was out of it and warming up wasn't on my mind. I lined up and found the guy who chewed me out the last crit I did. I was very pleased because I love singling someone out like that. The race started and I immediatly sat on his wheel. I uttered a few words so he remembered me, it was way to much fun. Then he got in a two man break a few laps in. I bridged easily and brought the field with me. His team shot off two other men and I marked each attack. When I get super competive I seem to lose all feeling so luckily the pain from the 3/4 race went away. Anyways, last lap, I sat in on the nameless mean man. He tore off the front with one other guy. This time I made a wonderful decsision not to go with him because I was determined for a field sprint. Going into the last turn I got boxed in pretty well and I was nervous he was going to win, I pushed my way through and had a huge spring up the last straight and passed a lot of people including the mean man. I got fourth and missed second by a hair. I had a ton of fun in this race. I also won 40 bucks --- party. Now I'm looking forward to the TNR and another uphill sprint!

Happy Fathers Day!

Want to say Happy Fathers today to all those followers of the blog who are fathers!!!

I was able to get out and ride with my dad today for about an hour, while sporting our matching Ship Cycling Kits....even though down here in Baltimore County Maryland, no one knows where the hell Shippensburg is!!

I hope all of you are having a great summer so far, and remember get out there and ride like the wind.

Hi all, in general, we have not not really been blogging very much so I figured that I would give an update.

I am proud to announce that, since January, as of today I broke 3,000 miles. My goal is to double that by the end of the year.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to do any races so far this summer. Basically, my pay checks have been barely enough to live on and between rent, bills and groceries, I have not had enough money to come up with the entry fees. I am hopeful that I will be able to race soon.

Friday I rode to my parents house in the rain and rode back again on Sunday in the sun. I thought that my arms were dark enough that I didn't need to put on any sunblock and it turns out that I was wrong. I burned pretty bad and needless to say, I learned my lesson.

Although I couldn't keep up with Jon, The Goat and Martin today I felt great and had a really good ride. After the race I went and climbed Big Flat. I hope that everyone is having a good summer and I hope to see you all at the meeting on Friday.

Chop

Race in Philly

Yesterday me and a few friends rode 30 miles down through Fairmont Park and into philly to watch the race. Floyd Landis did pretty well but got outsprinted on the last lap. While I was watching the race and noticed a guy ride by with the shippensburg shorts on but didnt recognize him! Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

tnr 05.26.09

Post-holiday rain and chill couldn't keep...well, it mostly kept people away, but a stalwart four did make the ride.

Martin, Big E, Eric A., and moi.

We've paid our Tuesday night rain dues... I predict sunny and dry through the remaining summer months.

:-)

Mix It Up...

I decided since I had limited time today to RUN! Haven't done this activity for a while and I guess it's some new fad... Jogging or Yogging? (I believe it's a silent J)
*Will Farrell, Anchorman

If you want to mix it up and try out a new work out, I remember a version of this from track (Chop or Conroy may be able to explain better) & did this today:

On a Track,

slower warm up mile
light stretch
150m slow jog, 50m fast jog-run, 100m sprint (90% effort), 100m walk/slower jog recovery
*repeat above lap 4-6 times.
1/2 mile cool down
stretch

I did only 4 laps today and my legs are heavy and my lungs are burned out.

Have Fun!

the tnr

In case we have readers that don't get my emails, you should know that the tnr is still going strong.

Start time has moved to 6pm. The riders bring the summertime heat.

Yesterday we had 11 riders, two of which were new faces (shout outs to Eric-the-Ship-alum-tri-guy and bluedog). The week before we were 10. So...there's regularly a decent group out here. Where are you?

...

I had to jet after a couple of laps, so I can't report first hand on the finish, but from my experience and firsthand accounts from two others, I've pieced together the following report:

First lap was chill (by order of the officials), until Joel pushed the pace towards the first sprint line, clearly hoping the rest of us would stay asleep. We woke up. He was quickly swarmed. The pace picked up. Several bodies shot out the back.

Since I only had two laps to play, I threw down what I had on the climb to the finish at the end of the first lap, and then again up the backside climb on lap number two. Granted, it was my last lap and everyone else's only second, but I was glad to see that I opened a sizable gap even on C-burg's Martin and sojourning Jon Marshall. However, they got it together and caught me by the backside sprint line, the points for which Martin handily gobbled up.

I left Martin and JM with a nice gap on three chasers (Rider Big E and the GC profs), but apparently within a lap they were caught, which set up a five-way sprint to the finish a lap later. JM pulled out the win. (Though there were reports of Martin pulling a cleat, which sent him off-balance into Eric's path, which sent him into the opposing lane of traffic with a truck bearing down. Yikes. Those cleat-pulling incidents are murder.)

time to pick it up

The '09 ECCC road survey results are out, and not a single Ship mention.

i iz ashamed...

...

Also, what's up with Pitt totally showing us up in travel? Those dudes are a good long way further from these races than us and they brought a crew to EVERY ONE?!

Ask for tires for Christmas... You're going to wear them out next year.

Summer Update (I'm bored)

Hello from Johnstown, it basically took an entire week for me to recover after Penn State. I've ridden a decent amount considering the rainy weather lately. The terrain here is really hurting though, I've lost my touch on my normal loops around my house. My friend and I did one of our favorite 27 mile loops yesterday which doesn't really have any big climbs but is never flat. According to his gps thingy, the loop still features 3,000 feet of climbing. Being summer now, I've started playing a lot of tennis. Its been killing me and I know I'm going to be racing tomorrow with some beat legs. I just couldn't resist the race and it had a cat 4 category which is perfect since I'm not really in the best of shape to do 3/4. I'm headed to ship after the race so I can pull the rest of the cycling club money out before last years budget closes. That means I'll be riding in Ship sometime Monday if anyone wants to join. I'll send out an email.

I've been watching the end of each Giro stage on Universial each morning. If anyone has some free mornings it's fun. Columbia High-road is awesome to watch and some of the young riders that have gotten stage wins fires me up. Edvald Hagen for Colombia is only 21, thats exciting. I don't really trust any cyclist that has been around for a while. It seems everyone has been involved with doping. Lance, Contador well way to many to list. It's lame. The young guys make it fun.

I also got some bright green handle bar tape that looks terrible (but sexy) on my bike.

caps?

I saw an article for Walz Caps on Velonews and decided to investigate further. I don't know if I'm the only one who likes a cap underneath my helmet (it think I wear one on 95% of all my rides) but if someone else does, these look nice:

http://www.walzcaps.com/index.html

I think I am going to get a personalized one. I think the Cotton Blend Red/Dark Blue one with "Shippensburg University" on the side would look good with this past year's kits. Just an idea if anyone is interested. Yes, it is $20 and you can find them on E-bay for $3, but it looks like quality material and the embroidery might look cool.

Hope summer is going well for everyone. If all goes well, I might make it down this Tuesday for the TNR, but I work 11pm-7am the night before so we'll see...

PSU ECCC Finals

SoCoYo

(The Start)

(The Draft)

(The Break)

(The Walk...)
(The Lead)

(The Finish)

A Must See Video

A friend just sent me this video, crazy stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o

Graduation Gift

So on Wednesday afternoon Rider Big E gave me an early graduation present, a 45 mile mountain bike ride from his place through Caledonia, Mont Alto, and god knows where else I was kind of lost most of the time. We had a fun/grueling ride with a little bit of a mist in the air, but a good temperature. The bikes held up better than the riders, I was and still am a little sore and I know Big E was a bit too. Below is the map of out ride, hard to tell exactly where we went with it but you can ask about it more, and also the elevation profile. The elevation profile shows around 4800 ft +/- a bit but still a lot. So we have more bikes for others to ride, so I send a challenge to other riders in the club or not to join us!!!

New Support Vehicle

Today Rider Big E was testing out our new support vehicle for ship cycling.

tnr 04.28.09

I was surprised to have only eight riders at the tuesday night races yesterday. I thought it was the weather that was keeping people away, but what excuse could there have been yesterday? (A: finals, papers, work, Kuwait, Sunday races, assorted whatevers...)

Congrats to Jon for taking both the points and overall win again this week. After launching my attack on the third ride up the Strohm Road climb, only Jon was able to maintain contact. We quickly built a sizable lead, then I flatted rounding the Walnut Dale/Whitmer corner (a rock, or something, took a sizable chunk from my rear tire) and Jon was able to hold off the charging hordes (the inestimable Rider Big E, tt stud Brian Hopkins, mtb superboy Matty Miller, McChop-A-Lot, Co-dee double-you, and Dan the pabikeracing man) for the remaining lap and a half.

Anyway, we had a great ride yesterday. Thanks, Dan & Brian, for coming out and supporting.

...

Spring semester is over but the tuesday night races will continue. We've enough students sticking around the area to make a core group, they're all interested, and we want you to come ride with us. Course stays the same. Time moves to 6pm. See you next Tuesday.

Intervals suck. Race your way into shape. Join us for the tnr.

85 Hot Miles

I decided to take Matt up on his offer for an 80+ mile ride yesterday. Conroy also decided to come along for at least part but then decided to do the entire thing with us. The scenery was great but the hot temperatures made it a little more difficult than expected. We conquered three giant climbs. On the third climb I suggested we don't take the truck route on 641 but the regular route. It sounded fun because I had never gone up that way before but we ended up paying for it. It was by far the hardest climb I've ever done. It was good training and now nothing at Penn State can look or feel that bad. I ended up taking my girlfriend out later that day for another 1o miles so I got around 95 miles in yesterday which is well over my past max for one day. I have some sweet pictures of the ride but I'll put those up later.