Category: Training
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Strava Shootout Week 3 – Smyer KOM
We are nearing the end of Week 3 of the second annual Birmingham Strava Shootout. Basically, we pick a different climb each week and then see who can get the fastest time up the climb. Mark Fisher has been crushing it (and crushing a lot of my KOMs along the way) so when he laid…
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2012 season statistics and reflection
With all that is happening in cycling right now, I definitely appreciate everyone who continues to follow my racing. I have never used any kind of performance enhancing drug, and it makes me sad/mad that so many of the stars of cycling from my generation have resorted to that during their careers. I think Phil…
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Fall adventure family style
A family picture before heading out on the hay ride to the pumpkin patch. We’ve gone to Old Baker Farm to pick out pumpkins and enjoy all the festivities for the past seven years. Check out our first visit in 2006. I left the house a couple hours ahead of Kristine and the kids to…
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Fall adventure on double oak way
At the edge of the helicopter hill descent – me and Simon – you can see the ridges all the way out to Hugh Daniel, which blocks the view of the Double Oak ridge line. I posted a message to Facebook yesterday that I wanted to ride out to Double Oak Way today, and three…
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Tour de Cullman 2012
Carson took this great photo of Boris and me approaching the Skyball KOM for the second time. Saturday marked another great end of the season ride/race/party at the Tour de Cullman. The ride starts out as a motor-cycle led neutral social ride before we hit the start of the 18 mile race portion of the…
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More videos from our weekend in South Carolina
In my post yesterday about my 176.5 mile end of the season epic ride, only uploaded a few of all the videos I took. Here are the other ones, including roller coaster road and a short clip of the climb through the fog up NC-215 to the parkway.
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End of the season epic 2012
Ride Summary 176 miles and just under 20,000 feet of climbing on a cold, foggy, sometimes rainy beautiful October day in the mountains of upstate South Carolina and western North Carolina. My one goal for the ride was to get the Sassafras KOM on the Cat 1 climb from the Eastatoe Valley, but I ended…
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Video bonanza
I’ve just inherited an iphone 3gs with video recording capability. And I’ve been documenting some of the climbs around Birmingham, but up until this afternoon I hadn’t figured out how to do any of the fast descents with the camera because I needed to use both hands to brake. I realized if I mashed the…
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Long ride today working over the South Shades Crest ridge line
Fun ride today – much longer than I had planned – ended up being just under 102 miles with over 12,000 ft of climbing. I wanted to put in some hard efforts, so I put in a few KOM efforts. Ironically, the one I wanted most I completely missed (i.e., I rode up the wrong…
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Cycling beach trip
We made the four hour drive today down to Pensacola Beach, Florida for my last stage race of the year this weekend. This was a great race last year, and I’m looking forward to the road race tomorrow morning and the criterium on Sunday. I’m not looking forward to the time trial, but it should…