Pat's Cycling Blog

Helmet….who needs a stinkin’ helmet

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:30:50 GMT

Today I loaded up for a short ride at Waverly. I have been riding the trainer so my stuff is scattered, shoes and hr monitor/gps downstairs, cold weather clothes in the laundry room, etc. I got everything (so I thought) together and headed out. As I pulled into the park I stopped at the top of the hill and got out to inspect the trail everything was good to go so I decided to hit it. I parked, got out and started gearing up and noticed that I didn’t have a helmet. I had a decision to make, miss out on the ride or just go and take it easy and pray not to crack my skull. Clearly, I took the 2nd option and decided to make it a little more than just a slow ride. I decided to not let myself get faster than around 10 mph any place I wasn’t completely under my own power, down hills, etc. This effectively killed any momentum and made me climb everything from essentially a dead stop, it was a hard ride but a fun one (believe it or not) I rode the race loop backwards and had a pretty good time.

One thing I decided while I was riding was that a helmet is much like disc brakes, it’s one of those things that doesn’t add any tangible speed but makes you way faster simply from confidence. I’ll never forget my first ride at Waverly with disc brakes a couple years ago, I felt like I was flying because I knew I could stop, it wasn’t a question of how far it would take me to stop, I KNEW when I hit the brakes I was going to stop and it made me a ton faster. Apparently a helmet is the same type of thing, I spent the entire ride worrying “what if my front wheel washes out in this turn” or “what if I slip on and my head hits this root” it took away from the ride a good bit. Oh well, next time I’ll remember my helmet (hopefully).

Cave Run……Always worth the trip

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:46:47 GMT

This weekend we went to Eastern KY to see the parents and on the way we stopped at Cave Run so I could have a ride. My wife and I have a pretty good compromise on riding trips at Cave Run, she drops me off and then gets to drive into town to eat at Melini’s (her favorite local restaurant) before coming to pick me up. We pulled into the Visitor’s Center (Centered in the map below) about 3:00, by the time I got changed and ready to roll it was 3:30 and I knew I would be racing the sun to get out of the woods.

After entering across the road from the Visitor’s Center, the ride starts off riding up the Sheltowee Trace for a little over a mile. It isn’t steep but it is a steady climb right out of the parking lot. You’ll see the signs alerting you to take a right onto the Lakeview trail. Follow that back to the road, it is a Great downhill and you can really fly if there aren’t leaves on the ground hiding every f-up rock I had to stay on the brakes way more than I normally do just because I couldn’t really tell what I was riding into. Anyway, after crossing the wooden bridge at the bottom take a right and follow that to the main road. Turn left on the road and ride until you see FS road 16 then hang a left onto that gravel road. Follow that for about 4 miles, you will switch back up the side of a good sized hill, it is pretty much all climbing doesn’t really let up during the whole climb. At about the 4 mile point on the gravel road you will take a Left and follow that road until it comes to a dead end. I rolled up to this point and noticed that it was really starting to get dark and I wasn’t even in the woods at that point, still on the road…..getting a little nervous. Anyway, at that point I was not going to go down the FS road, how boring is that, so I continued past the gate onto the Big Limestone trail. The hardest trail section of the ride (in my opinion) follows, you will ride the ridge with a lot of ups and downs many of the ascents are rocky and steep. The views from Big Limestone in the winter are great, you can see forever and it’s worth the price of admission. After another several miles you will meet back up with the Sheltowee, hang a left and follow that on down to the bottom. The last mile or two is the highlight of the ride, you will be kind of tired and the screaming fast downhill is just what the Dr. ordered to put a huge smile on your face. It was really really dark by the time I started this downhill, I still managed to hit a top speed of 24 mph, which seemed like 45 because of the leaf cover and the low light. I clipped a tree with my shoulder on one turn, didn’t hurt me really just kind of spooked me and made me slow up a bit.

I can’t stress enough how fun Cave Run is, there is enough variety to keep you busy for a week if you tried to ride everything with rides that vary in length from about an hour to do a loop on Caney to an hour and a half or so to do the loop I just described or an all-day epic from the Zilpo area, we are lucky to have it available to ride. I want to go over and do a point to point sometime from Zilpo over to the Visitor’s Center side of the lake, think that could be a fun one if there weren’t too many trees down.

Anyway, 1:53 minutes for me on this one, again I’m still out of shape, 2400 Cals burned, over 4k ft. of climbing on the 16 miles I did. I’m thinking this is a great training loop for Leadville, I am probably going to try to do several weekend trips and have my wife set up at the end of FS road 16 in the turnaround while I do loops on this trail. The Elevation gain per mile is similar (if not a little higher) than Leadville.

Bottom line, if you live in KY and haven’t been to Morehead to ride Cave Run you are really cheating yourself it is a destination for sure.

What a great Thanksgiving…

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:23:45 GMT

Normally Thanksgiving, and all other major holidays, begin with an early start and a long drive back to Lewis County where I am from. This year we decided to try something new, staying home and having our family come to us. It was so nice, my wife cooked a huge meal and we ate and I didn’t have to drive anywhere, even better I only had to go to 1 Thanksgiving meal instead of the normal 4 to 5 rushed meals as my wife, kids and I rush to see everyone in our family’s (both divorced so a lot of places to go and people to see). Anyway, I had my normal Oats for breakfast to attempt to avoid overdoing it for lunch. I ate a good bit but didn’t stuff myself (another first) but man was it good. Then we all sat around and did nothing, just talked and hung out…Talk about a perfect day. Then I went and messed it up by putting in a killer hour on the trainer, but even that and the gallon of sweat that came with it couldn’t ruin this day.

Tomorrow we are heading to Eastern KY and I’m going to ride Cave Run Tomorrow and Saturday morning, looking forward to that. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Another day on the trainer and Chinese Democracy

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:39:41 GMT

OK, so first things first, I got on the trainer this evening and put in an hour at a pretty steady pace, felt like I had a good solid workout. When I downloaded the data from my HRM/Computer it said that in 1 hr tonight I burned about 1200 cals, however last night doing the Spinerval in like 30ish minutes I burned 1600 cals. I guess there really is benefit to doing a targeted workout.

Secondly, I bought the new Guns N Roses album today, first album I have bought in literally years. After listening to it while on the trainer tonight I’ll rate it a 3 out of 5. One of the great things about it is that it was put together over 15 or so years so there are a ton of different sounds and artists. That timeline is also one of the downfalls of the album over the past 15 years a large number of sounds have topped the charts and it seems that Axl Rose must have picked one sound from each of those genres. You can hear Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, Santana, etc. I will say one thing though, the title track Chinese Democracy actually got me up out of the saddle and in the big ring for 5 minutes of pure punishment, it’s pretty good.

I hate Coach Troy……

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:39:28 GMT

I don’t know the man, but I really can’t stand him, the sight of him and the sound of his voice makes me want to puke. Mainly because I know an hour or so of punishment is coming. Today my kids have some friends coming over so no time for an actual MTB ride so I retired to the basement to jump on the trainer and do a Spinerval. Wow, Yet another smack in the face about just how out of shape I am, I did a short 40 minute workout and went really hard the whole time. It was a good one mixed it up with high cadence work and one-leg drills, etc. I haven’t uploaded by HRM data yet but I guarantee I averaged better than 160ish bpm the entire thing (besides the warm up). The one legged drills really got my quads BURNING, sitting here after a shower and a short rest and they are still kind of burning. Oh well, weighed myself today and I’m down 2.6 for the week so far, if I can keep that up consistently I’ll have the weight off by 1st Quarter ‘09 leaving me to concentrate fully on stamina and speed from April through August, this just might work after all. Anyway, if you see Coach Troy punch him in the face and then help him up and tell him thanks, I feel like I had a good (although short) workout but my legs are really sore right now.

First MTB ride since July…

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:46:20 GMT

Yeah sad I know, today I pulled out the Canzo and hit Cherokee and did about 1:20 ride around the park. I noticed many technical features are gone but I still had a good time, I couldn’t really focus on the trail anyway because my lungs were burning horribly. It was cold but I was dressed about right, so I wasn’t too cold (except on road sections) Other than the missing features the trails were in pretty good shape, solid and fast for the most part. I parked at the base of Wilderness and started there, it didn’t take long to get my HR up starting up that little hill. The rest of Wilderness was pretty uneventful, there were a couple new log crossings which was a nice touch. They helped me remember why I went to the 29er as it rolls stuff so much smoother and easier than my old FS 26er.

One of the low points of the ride was when I actually had to drop to granny to clean the hill coming out of Wilderness loop toward the golf course trail…it’s been 2 years since I ever used anything lower than my middle ring at Cherokee. The good news, if there is any, is that I didn’t have to use that gear again for the rest of the ride. I weighed myself on the Wii Fit this morning and I am 260 on the nose, at least I know where I’m starting from and exactly what I have to do. If you have never seen an adult on a Wii Fit then you haven’t lived ha…My wife says it’s pretty hilarious to watch me try to do yoga on it and my kids have a blast on it. Anyway, I ate pretty good today (great actually) and my Forerunner said I burned 1600 cals today while I was out there, that seems high but I averaged about 159 bps on the heartrate monitor, maxed out at 181 today so maybe it’s right.

Currently listening Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel

Link should play in Windows Media or ITunes

Leadville……a dream

pat_collins44@hotmail.com — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:59:09 GMT

In 2002 my brother spent a summer and fall in Alamosa, CO guiding elk hunts. In early November I flew out to Albuquerque, NM where he picked me up at the airport dressed in full on Cowboy gear, after an initial laugh, we were off to the mountains. In Alamosa we took horses (I know horses in a bike blog) to the Great Sand Dunes national monument and then up into the San Juan Mountains it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. After several days in Alamosa we headed north and the adventure continued, we took 285 North out of Alamosa and continued for a while through some beautiful terrain. We decided to go to Aspen so we took a left onto route 82 past two of the most clear/still mountain lakes I have ever seen here’s a pic:

We stopped to take a few pics and I swore that I would return to what I thought, to that point in my life, was one of the most awe inspiring locations I had ever been. Anyway, we jumped into the truck and continued northwest. About 30 miles up the road we hit this:

You can’t see because we had climbed up on this but it is a 12 – 15 ft. snow drift completely covering the road, the pass was closed do we would have to turn back. We didn’t really care as the trip was more important than the destination. Right after the above picture was snapped I noticed a fresh set of what I think were Mountain Lion tracks in the snow, they were huge wish I had something for scale in the pic.

We turned around and decided to go to Vail, where we had a wonderful time for 4 days of skiing

and then we continued on to Boulder for a couple days, up into Wyoming where we hit the Sierra Trading post headquarters/store in Cheyenne (worth the trip if you are in the area)

Driving back through Kansas at about 85 mph at 2:30 a.m., we heard a huge thump and then a loud grinding we got pulled over and got out and looked around the truck and couldn’t see anything, we finally noticed that the rear drum was sitting on the inside rim of truck rim, all of the studs had sheered off of the drivers side rear wheel, so a spare was clearly useless. Neither of our cell phones had service, we were totally screwed. We found and old phone under his seat with no bars of service and no battery level showing but we turned it on and called 911 and IT WORKED!!! They sent a tow truck. An hour or so later a pissed off dude picked us up and took us back to his garage where he proceeded to unhook us outside, he jumped in his tow truck and told us he would see us at 9:00 a.m. So we had to sit there and try to sleep while cycling the truck on and off to stay warm. He got us rolling the next day and back to KY we came……

What a great trip, just writing it out makes me get a huge smile on my face…anyway back to that lake. A couple weeks ago I was talking to my wife about the trip and about that lake, which I had no idea where was located. I hit google maps and traced our track from Alamosa up to the road toward Aspen, the nearest town to the lakes was Leadville. As an avid Fat Cyclist reader that name rang a bell so I started doing some more reading and it all kind of fell together in my mind. My wife is on-board so it’s time for me to start training so I can suffer for 12 hours near a place where one of the best memories of my life unfolded…I hope I can keep up the training and make this an annual trip. 14k ft of climing, 102 miles all above 10k ft above sea level…yikes

Find more info here:

http://www.leadvilletrail100.com/merchant.ihtml?id=1425&step=2