Category: Training
-
Alabama State Time Trial (do-over)
My attempt at the Alabama State Time Trial last week shortly after having some pretty bad food poisoning went really poorly. I had been looking forward to comparing my time with what I had done two years ago, so today I put my clip-on bars back onto the bike and swapped out to my Reynolds…
-
Signal Mountain – another Alabama Cat 2 climb
Well, today’s mountain bike ride definitely fit the bill for a “cycling adventure”. Highlights included riding in and behind a thunderstorm, riding through a pilgrimage of devout Catholics, stumbling upon a small forest fire, discovering another Strava Cat 2 climb for Alabama, lots of mud, lots of flying ants, and lots of yellow jackets. Here…
-
S Cove Dr in pictures
View from the middle of S Cove Dr shortly after the blind corner There is a road near my house that drops 240 feet in 0.3 miles, which works out to an average gradient of 18%. Since it is relatively flat (-5% to -10%) at the top and bottom that means the middle section is…
-
Birmingham ridges, part ii
My bike at the Cahaba Beach road bridge. You have to hoist your bike over the barricade and carefully ride the planks to make it over to Cahaba Beach road. Watch out for the holes straight through to the river! A post about climbing the ridges in Birmingham wouldn’t be complete without my favorite ridges…
-
Birmingham ridges
After three weeks of traveling out west and enjoying some really amazing riding and sightseeing with the family, I have been enjoying a week of riding back in Birmingham. Today’s ride typifies the type of ridge riding that you can do here in Birmingham. I started out this ride with a loop on the side…
-
Out west summary
What an amazing trip we had out west this summer … 21 days and just over 4000 miles of visiting family and sightseeing in 8 states. The genesis of the trip was our cousin’s wedding in Phoenix for Memorial Day weekend. But there was also a really cool mountain bike race the next weekend in…
-
Out west – days 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Day 17 – Inside the Valles Caldera Day 17 – View of Los Alamos from the Pajarito Ski Hill Sunday, Day 14 – Flagstaff, AZ Bike to work week kick-off parade, Garmin search and non-rescue, Lowell observatory Saturn rings We slept in a bit on Sunday having a leisurely morning before Kip and I took…
-
Out west – days 9, 10, 11, 12
Tuesday, Day 9 – Bike shops plus easy canal ride It turns out that I was really lucky with my Mt Lemmon ride — today when I got ready to go for a ride, I discovered that a front spoke was broken. I had left the bike outside over night so maybe some animal had…
-
Out west – day 8 – Mount Lemmon
Today was another highlight day as I had the opportunity to drive down to Tucson and climb Mt Lemmon. I knew that I had no shot at getting the KOM on the short version of the climb after riding 104.5 miles yesterday and setting a new 25 minute power record taking the South Mountain KOM…
-
Out west – days 4, 5, 6, 7
Thursday, Day 4 – sunset adventure with Josiah After a fun hobo dinner over the campfire, Josiah and I set out on a sunset adventure. We took the new trail I found to the Bright Angel lodge and then connected with Hermit Rd, which is open only to shuttles and cyclists. I pushed Josiah up…