My turn for fun in the mud

“Running is, uh, hard” — Lance Armstrong, Nov. 7, 2009, via Twitter.
I watched NE Ohio regional cross country meet and came away inspired. It was wet and muddy. It was hard. Everyone suffered. In short, it was epic.
Just the kind of thing I wanted to try … oh … the very next morning. [...]

A little mud wrestling

120 runners are lined up across the starting line at the girls regional cross country meet. At the starter’s signal they crouch and ready themselves for the start. The gun fires and the long line quickly forms into a pack, with runners jostling for position. Elbows are thrown and runners are pushed.
Standing at [...]

A little competition is good for you

Ingredients for a funk:
- no more races on the calendar
- less daylight
- cold, rainy weather
- having to wear leg warmers, arm warmers, gloves, and booties
- looking at the calendar and seeing the really dismal months on the horizon
A good antidote: endorphins and a little competition.
After doing the Ohio Outside Trail Race I was surprised at [...]

A different kind of suffering

Wake up early on a Saturday morning. Drink coffee. Pack bag with race clothes and stuff for after the race. Eat. Drink more coffee. Head out to the Munroe Falls Metro Park.
Arrive to 35 degrees and rain. It feels just like a spring bike race. Only it’s the OhioOutside.com [...]

20 years of progress

Here’s a measure of progress in the last 20 years: when Greg LeMond won the 1989 World Championship (in an amazing finish), we had to grovel for token TV coverage and scraps of news buried on page 10 of the sports section. 20 years later, on a rainy Sunday morning, I sat and drank coffee [...]

Suck wheel or get dropped?

Here’s the situation: you make what looks to be the winning breakaway. But quickly you realize that if you keep working at the same pace you’re likely to be dropped from the break.
What do you do? Sit on and be a wheel-sucker, or continue to work and most likely get dropped?
This was the [...]

When you come to a fork in the trail, take it

While out trail running at the West Woods, I came to a fork in the trail, happened to look down, and saw a fork laying in the middle of the trail. A few moments later I wondered whether someone did this as a joke.
It reminded me of the Yogiism: “When you come to a [...]

Don’t try this

When you see someone on a bike talking on a cell phone, do you think, “what a wanker”? What about texting? What about someone laying in the road, one foot clipped into a pedal and one hand holding the cell phone?
Yeah, that would be me.
My defense is: the text was from my [...]

Don’t need a weatherman …

What did we do in the days before weather radar was a few mouse clicks away? We looked up at the sky, decided it was safe to ride … and then got wet a lot more often.
The forecast today was for ’scattered showers’. Scattered is OK, as long as the rain is scattered [...]

Just riding around

I’m coming to the conclusion that interesting encounters happen more often while you are out “just riding around”. That’s “just riding around”, as opposed to an intentional training ride — the dreaded 2×20 minute intervals, hill repeats, sprints, etc. For example …
Not long ago while just riding around I found myself helping an [...]