Category: Training
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Quick ride report, pics, and videos – Heartwood
Yesterday’s ride from Shell Lake to Heartwood was much colder than I anticipated mainly because of the constant light snowfall that combined with salted county roads meant wet, cold, cold, cold feet. Fortunately, I had a chemical warmer pack and was able to put that into my shoe about halfway through the ride. Unfortunately, I…
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A very cold adventure
Welcome to Wisconsin – when we made a gas / food stop at the Wisconsin dells at 5 in the morning, the temp had fallen to 12 degF. Eventually it would bottom out at -2 degF. We are in cold, snowy Wisconsin after twenty hours of driving. The temperature fell from 50s degF in Alabama…
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Goodner Mountain – Trussville exploration
Quick ride report … I was working from home this morning when I got a call from Rocky Ridge that Analise was sick with a fever. Kristine was down in Helena on a long run with Kim so I drove over and picked Analise up. We snuggled on the couch and watched Hugo while we…
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Strava Shoot-out Belmont
This week’s Strava shoot-out climb is Belmont Rd over in Irondale. I was working on the computer this morning when Kristine mentioned that the high was going to be close to 70 today. After having frost in our yard and on our neighbhor’s roofs this morning, I immediately thought “updraft!!!” So I finished what I…
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Strava Shoot-out Week 9 plus Pine Mountain adventure
View from near Pine Mountain high point (click to enlarge) So here is the backstory for this ride – I took Monday off, and on Tuesday my legs felt like a million bucks. So I decided during my ride on Tuesday that I would put in my Strava Shoot-out effort on my Wednesday ride. Tuesday…
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Thanksgiving weekend training
Jaggy the bunny was sound asleep, but if she was trying to play dead then she did an emmy award winning performance for a good 30 seconds … enough to scare me into thinking maybe she was dead! With Kristine taking the kids early in the week up to a big family Thanksgiving gettogether in…
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Strava Shootout plus Red Mountain 1200s
It seems it has become an annual Thanksgiving Day tradition for me to head on over to Red Mountain and Ruffner Mountain to climb to the 1200ft summits. This year I did the route in the reverse direction so that I could put in my Strava Shoot-out effort on the Grants Mill – Karl Daly…
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Clingman’s Dome 2x plus Waterrock Knob
Today’s ride may very well have been my toughest road ride ever (last week’s 9 hour mountain bike race at Oak Mountain may have been a smidge tougher). I’ve done rides that were much longer with twice the total climbing, but this one was particularly difficult because I was trying to go for some really…
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Gatlinburg Day 1
Do you know how much I love riding in the true mountains? We got in last night at 11:45PM, and I knew that my 700x23c racing tires would be no match for potentially slick icy roads up here so I spent another 30 minutes changing both tires and putting on some good 700x25c all-weather tires…
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Lover’s Leap, Bluff Park, Alabama
Beautiful overcast fall day today for my commute home from work. I wanted to head up to Bluff Park instead of my normal commute through Vestavia Hills. A little more than an hour into my ride, I found myself exploring the Lover’s Leap rocks up in Bluff Park with the cool inscription shown below (and…