It's been just about three weeks since I last posted. I like to think of my break as "recovery time." I felt a bit burned out and did not really feel like I had anything new to say. I was up to the same old same old--work two days rest one and so on. Training is going well--still the same old boredom of 4-5 days a week inside and if I'm lucky a day or two outside which goes a long way in terms of refreshing the mind. So what's new? I got into the Mt. Washington Hill Climb which should be awesome and has me really excited--it's a big goal of mine for this year. It's 7.6 miles averaging 11.9% grade with just a touch over 4700 feet of climbing--I'd like to get up in somewhere around an hour and 15 mins. I still need to get into the practice ride and sort out the gearing, I'm thinking it is going to be close to 1 to1.
The pictures/data below are borrowed from Northeastcycling.com, which is a fantastic resource for all things hill climbing in the northeast maintained by Doug Jansen, aka Hill Junkie. It should give you a pretty decent idea of what's to come.
The climb finishes with a ridiculous 22% incline.
The summit is notorious for foul and very unpredictable weather, until just recently it had the proud honor of being home to the fastest ever recorded wind speed on earth (excluding tornadoes), a whooping 231 mph. In case you are wondering, the new record was recorded on Barrow Island Australia--254 mph.
You'll also notice that I added several other hill climbs to the 2010 race schedule--can't wait.
In terms of getting this year's schedule completed I just need to get into the VT 50 and of course the Iceman.
Camp Jackrabbit 2.0 is going to happen the last week of April. Instead of doing the Greenbrier Challenge like last year, we thought we would have some fun and "rock the one cog" at Single Speed-A-Palooza. Darkhorse Cycles always puts on a great event and it's only 2 hours away instead of the 8 hours it took us to get down to Maryland--that's 12 hours we do not have to spend in the car. As we did last year, we are going to do nothing but ride, rest, eat and recover for a week. I'd love to talk the Big Man into a trip up to Vermont for some hill climbing and maybe knock off the Six Gap ride--that will only happen if he does not check it out. Be warned Biggin', Cora seems to be on board for more awesome food. It's only taken 3 years but the attic is close enough to done that Big Dave can have his own room instead of the couch. So if you want to join us for any of the rides during the week, give a holler.
The big dilemma is still July and the trip to France. As usual, we want to do too much which has made things a logistical nightmare loaded with extra cost. To make matters worse, our tardiness has made booking a flight on free miles impossible, not to mention what seems to be a total lack of accommodations around Alpe d' Huez. More to come this as things pan out.
Lastly, I think we have come pretty close to ordering the new kit. We just need to decide on the bibs--classic and practical black or the fast and stylish white that's a laundry nightmare as Cora puts it. What do you think?
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