Beer Me

Interesting data point from last year's riding - 1 beer = 8.0 miles on the road, or 3.25 miles on the mountain bike. Probably skewed that much due to more race training and racing on the mountain bike, more touring and commuting rides on the road. My Garmin Edge 500 tracks heart rate, position, distance, speed, cadence, elevation, could do power if I had a power meter (but Strava can estimate power from the uploaded data).   Bike computers have come a long way since my first one, a mechanical mile counter that used a peg attached to a spoke to turn a wheel.

So 1 loop at Island Lake (13 miles) is equal to about 4 beers... probably not the best way to power my rides though.

Try getting that off your AMF Roadmaster Deluxe Mileage Counter!

Rebooting the blog, what the !@#& am I getting myself into?

I'm rebooting this blog - I joined RACING GREYHOUNDS for this season, so I should be doing interesting races and training rides this year. I've done quite a few races, but this year I'm planning on training for them so maybe I'll have better results.

For example, last weekend I did the Worst Day of the Year Ride in Ann Arbor. It really wasn't the worst day of the year for riding, but it was cold and windy. Lots of Greyhound teammates there, so peer pressure was a definite factor in getting me out on the bike on a day where I would have stayed inside and brewed beer or something in the past.

Two races are already confirmed on the calendar - Barry-Roubaix on March 23 and X100 on August 24. Barry-Roubaix is 36 miles on dirt roads with some singletrack - probably a good route for the Trek 7.5FX Disc. I'm quite sure I can ride the 36 miles - maybe not very fast, but I'll finish.

X100 is a 100 mile, solo, mountain bike race using NCT in the Traverse City/Kalkaska area. Sounds like it uses some of the Iceman route. This one I really don't know about - the longest MTB race I've done so far is the Stoney Creek Sweat Miser Marathon last July, and I ended up dropping out of that after about 30 miles... it was really hot and humid, and I wasn't the only one to DNF, but 30 miles isn't anywhere near 100 and August isn't likely to be much cooler than July.

There are some other races tentatively on the calendar - Peak 2 Peak, Stoney Creek 6 Hour, Lumberjack 100 (if I get in), Iceman again, if I get in), Tree Farm Relay, and a few others. And Derek and I will be doing DALMAC again - 4 days, 320 miles from Lansing to Mackinaw should really seem like a vacation after X100.

It's going to be an interesting year...