The Official Guide to the World between the Wheels

Slacking off

Work Weather and day to day life...... Yea i'm still alive. The past couple of weeks have terrorized my allergies with the warmer weather and people already cutting their grass (how long until winter?). With a little help from modern chemistry & science i fought off my first real sinus infection of the year. I've gotten back into the swing of routine riding and have recently gotten to ride with Timmy Lyons who was off for a few weeks since his back surgery. He's riding well and I'm glad to have him back. I've also been joining the Trek of Pittsburgh shop rides from Robinson so it's been nice seeing all the normal faces from last year there. In addition i get my tuesday evening rides with TJ at North Park and on occasion been making a sunday hill repeat ride with him at Kennerdell (very boring but good for the legs)
Anyway it seems like this early in the season its hard to get to a race. The only weekends i've had free the races were to far away and again this weekend i have other commitments for work that will keep me from the startint line once again. No hurry there is an entire summer of racing ahead but I am getting a little pumped to get some race legs under me.
*stork  

Whats going on.

I would have to say I've been pretty busy for the past week so let me back up and recap a few things
I headed back out to Blue Knob on April 9th for another night ride with Brandon. This time he showed up with a brand new 29er (Cannondale caffeine) I think it was largely due to the fact that he struggled to drop me the week before while pedaling a 26' Scalpel and wasn't about to have that happen 2 weeks in a row. Never the less he rolled out the new ride and we headed back into the mountain top. This week however he chose to climb it twice (almost). Which gave my totals something like 5200' of climbing in less than 25 miles. I was exhausted to say the least and Brandon looked extremely "fresh" even at the end of our ride. I have to say it was another great ride and i look forward to doing this a few more times this summer. Thanks Brandon.
Saturday I worked on wheelsets and tires until the afternoon when i went downtown pittsburgh to meet up with allieb for lunch and a little city ride on the singlespeed road bike. We ate & then pedaled up to one of the Trek of Pgh locations to visit Tonya & Ted before returning back downtown to drop off some film she need to get processed and then parted ways. Thanks allieb
Sunday I got up early and meet up with TJ and Kennerdell for some more hill repeats. This turned out to be a very cool morning but the sun was shining and the trails were really dry. A few climbs & trips back to the car before TJ departed for his return to Franklin and I stuck around to climb the hillside another 3 times before splitting. This was another good day with 35+ miles and over 5400' climbing. I then went to my families for Easter and crashed for the evening.

Monday it was back to work and a lite ride monday evening followed with watching some TV while my throat became sore and the sinus cold arrived. Great I made it all winter without catching something and then the week i plan to race & this comes!! Well its gotten worse as the week has progressed. Last night being the most difficult, waking several times until i finally gave up trying to sleep around 3:30 a.m. and turned the TV back on. Sneezing, runny nose and coughing!!! Aaauugh!

This has been the most I haven't ridden in almost 8 months. In fact the last time i missed more than 3 days was probably Interbike.

Enough about that. Hopefully I get back on the saddle Sunday or Monday. In the meantime I'll suffer through this.

stork

Gary goes for a Road ride

Today i made it to the second of the Mingo Road races but earlier this week i picked up a new Fisher ARC Pro road bike. I made a few changes to the drive train like putting on my older Dura-Ace in place of the 105 10speed that came on it. I just didn't feel that the 12-27 cassette coupled to the 50/34 chain-ring was enough for racing. I mean i pedaled my Mendota around all winter with full fenders and never needed a 34.
Moving on the bike road well and i was pleased with its cornering and acceleration (which was hindered by my lack of power). These are some really "sharp" looking rides and they are reasonably priced.
stork

Random Shot 04-04-09

Lucky to have such fast friends.

The race season is upon us yet still i feel it's a little too early so i'll hit another road race or two just for the practice and workout. Thankfully i've been getting some solid rides in with TJ but this past week i got an invite from one of the nicest racers i know. That would Brandon Draugelis. I'm not going to go into a detailed background on him because if you race or follow racing you will recognize the name. To me he's simply the fast kid with awesome parents from Locust Gap PA that i'm happy to be friends with.

Well anyway Brandon has always been racing for Cannondale and recently got himself a job for them in Bedford (Congrats). Our paths crossed recently on face-book and we made plans to meet up at Blue Knob State park. Not knowing much about the area but knowing a lot about how fast Brandon is, i chose to take the Superfly with gears. Could i have handled this ride on my single speed?...i'm sure i could have, but maybe next time.

The Ride-start
We parked just outside of the gate and got ready. Brandon was happy to see that my rear wheel had several "stacked" gears rather than one in the rear & one up front. He smiled and said "nice, we can take the trail up"
We jumped on our bikes and immediately turned into a trail that started climbing & did so fairly steep from the start. I have grades registered at almost 22% on my garmin from the start of this ride. Nice warm up. Clearly Brandon is wanting to see an older mans heart explode. Never the less i just kept turning the cranks and "hitting" my inhaler to aid my breathing.(not really)
The steepness subsided in a very short distance and we were left climbing a nice steady grade in some very sweet single track. Keeping a fairly good pace (i thought a 7.8 mph avg for 1700' ascent was good) we were able to maintain a conversation in between some labored breathing.
I chuckled the entire way up as i watched my GPS register... the numbers on the altitude gain were turning over faster than the mileage. I liked this. Once we reached the top i had a solid 1800' in gain and all within the first 5 miles! I never get to ride stuff like this for "training". (it's no wonder why this guy is so fast)

The Ride-mountain top
The fog had started to roll in on the mountain top (3,146' above sea level) just as we had gotten there. Going from clear solid singletrack to rocks immediately followed our climb up. I was amazed at the trails. Darkness came...lights went on...conversation continued... and riding went forward. We spun around the mountain top for approx 8 more miles while racking up another 1000' of climbing before getting ourselves a little mixed up in the fog. Well i was mixed up but Brandon did a fine job of steering us back onto course. The fog was horrible and it had started to rain but nothing that was soaking.
The Ride-descent
Now the down hill lay in front of us and i was a little disappointed that we would have to scale back because of the blinding fog. We entered the descent cautiously but luckily only a few hundred yards down the fog cleared and it was an open view. Swoosh we let it it rip!
Sliding into a stop to make a sharp right, we stopped and i noticed our brakes were smoking! Brandon and I laughed about it and continued on. This descent had some really fast sections with rocks littered here and there so I maintained a safe distance back from Brandon as to avoid any accidents. Actually I'm not sure i could have gotten any closer because it was everything i could do to stay with him! Eyes watering, hands & wrists throbbing from the braking.
We dumped out of the trail just a hundred yards or so from the cars and I was clearly feeling euphoric. Looking at the stats of 18 miles total,  2,775' ascent with an average speed over 8 mph made me happy.
 I have to give a big thanks to Brandon for inviting me out to ride and you should look back here for more stories about Blue Knob because I can tell you that i'll be going back a few more times to ride with Brandon.

Growing pains

And again...we leave the parking lot and only get several hundred yards before a multi-tool is needed & TJ is adjusting his seat height. It just wouldn't be a "normal" ride with out this adjustment!

We ran into this group and since I didn't have to be home early I got the chance to ride with them for awhile. A solid group of riders who...like TJ & I...meet every week same time & you either make the ride or you don't. No major discussion changing times and places to fit everyones schedule. Notice the wheel size? All 29ers!! I hope to get the chance to roll with these outlaws again (left to right- Stork, Tom, George, Steve & Ed)

*stork