Category: Training
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Cold and Icy Double Oak Mountain
Great ride today – very cold though! I climbed up Double Oak Mountain to see if there was more snow and ice up near the top because of the elevation difference. I was surprised to find trees sagging under the weight of a lot of ice. I think we dodged a bullet here in Birmingham…
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400 mile week, Strava online competition, a fun look back at old milestones
401 miles this week with 37,373 feet of climbing! I wasn’t sure if I was going to ride today with the winter storm warning, but the system wasn’t moving in until later in the day. So I rode 45 miles on the way to church with almost 6,000 feet of climbing. Then after church I…
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How hilly is your ride?
We just got back to Alabama after traveling up to Wisconsin for Christmas and New Year’s. On the way back home, we stopped to visit Kristine’s grandmother in northern Indiana. During the trip, I got to ride in Wisconsin and Indiana. Then yesterday I did a 54 mile ride with over 6000 feet of climbing…
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Dick’s to the Rescue
The weather forecast called for a cold rain pretty much all day today back here in Birmingham. But as I was working from home, I noticed a huge gap in the rain clouds on the radar. So I decided to go for the 60 mile climbing ride that I’ve been wanting to do after the…
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Last ride of 2010
The weather forecast for today included a winter weather advisory with really cold temps. We went to visit some friends about 30 miles away near Hayward, WI. I took my bike along to try to ride back to Shell Lake if the roads were clear enough. I mapped out a route that took me near…
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Some cross-training and riding in the Wisconsin – Minnesota river valleys
We are on a mini-vacation within our vacation staying in a remote part of northwestern Wisconsin, where the nearest traffic light is about 50 miles away, and even then, that’s the only traffic light within about 100 miles of here! Anyway, today’s ride involved shuttling out the two miles of unplowed road from our cabin…
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Mountain biking in the rural northwoods
Seven and a half years ago today, Kristine and I got married in a beautiful little town called Shell Lake followed by our wedding reception about 45 minutes away even further north into the northwoods of rural Wisconsin at a retreat center called the Schwan Center. Today, I biked from Shell Lake 32 miles up…
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Into the winter wonderland for some winter training
We left Birmingham on Christmas Day just before noon and arrived in Wisconsin a little bit before 11AM on Sunday – 23 hours total trip, out of which almost 20 was me driving. Instead of sleeping once we got here, I went ahead and decided to push through the training and enjoy the beautiful winter…
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Red Mountain 1200s
Awesome training rides today. Two rides totaling 65.5 miles and 7,360′ of climbing. First, I did a quick commute into O’Henrys on Lakeshore for a progress meeting on a collaborative research project for Samford. I wanted a lot of climbing so I picked out a route that climbed over Little Valley Mountain part of the…
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A very rainy Pine Mountain climbing loop
I explored three new climbs today on a somewhat epic 103 mile ride in the rain with nearly 8500′ of climbing. Classes ended last week, and my students finished up their finals online today. With the icy roads and a very busy day of grading yesterday, I decided to take yesterday completely off. That opened…