I fought the tree

But the tree one.

No Mohican for me this weekend, a "boxers break" in my left hand did me in. I'm only missing tornadoes and rain anyways.

This is lame, and short, but it'll probably be my last blog for a while, as I'm working in an internet-free zone all summer.

Sweet stories and pictures from Morgantown starting in august.

A Few Thousand Words

This is a fast bike. The fork is awesome, the wheels are quick, and it handles very well.

Color me happy.

Alarming Degrees of Tackiness

While on my porcelain throne last night I leafed through a Nashbar catalog and almost fell off when I saw these advertised. Primal wear is bad, these are really nausea inducing.


While a Camelbak might be a tramp stamp that says "I(Heart) Trails" having these pedals on a bike, any bike, is kind of like a ponytail on a bald guy, or a "Helmet Laws Suck" sticker on your motorcycle helmet. Observe.

Even the Terry catalog has enough self-dignity to keep these out of their pages. What's even more unbelievable is the price - 58 bucks for a pair of pedals that look like butterflies. For the same money you could get a used Chris King Headset on Ebay.

Visual Demonstration - Chris King Headset on your bike -


Or the Nashbar "Taijitsu" Pedals -

Putting these pedals on your bike makes you look like this guy.


Obviously not Asian, obviously stupid. Doofus probably does Tai-Chi in public places, and defends himself with "Markhitsyou," Sensae Mark Mullert's exclusive brand of self defense.

The only guys I can imagine with these

are the jokers that pull up to the trailhead in their SUV playing Nickelback, riding in cutoffs, cotton t-shirts, aviators, Reebok Pumps, and no helmets. They usually have ponytails, too, which qualifies them for both the "Wah-Wah" and the "Taijitsu."

I have a vision of a muffin top on a department store bike, with one taijitsu pedal, one wah-wah pedal, that is almost as foul as my recurring dream about walking around the grocery store in my underwear, eating grated parmesean cheese. Mmmmmm.

A Weekend of Debauchery

What do you call a weekend where every meal involves some sort of grilled meat? Awesome. That's all you can call it. I really partied hard this weekend - I had 3/4 of a beer on Saturday (my limit) and a can of Sprite on Sunday. I also shaved my legs.

I call it "Cyclist Gone Wild"

A couple solid weeks of riding have left me feeling fit. I rode 50 miles on the MTB this weekend, with 3 good laps at Sprague Brook mixed in with my MTB commute. The ride was fueled by Dr. Dre, MSTRKRFT, 50 Cent, and Cliff products.

While my BBQ chicken is really guiltless gourmet, I felt bad about riding while the WNYMBA Trail Gnomes were outside working hard this weekend - the trails are in primo shape, though, and I enjoyed the perfect dirt.

I am registered and ready to rock @ mohican. Now all I have to do is continue to build my fitness and do everything for our move to Morgantown in the next 6 weeks. It can be done.

Bike Commuting = GO

Who says New York is ugly? No one who has my commute. 7.5 miles each way, lake views, windmills.... awesome.

The weather here is getting better daily. I've even gone on a couple of rides without knee/arm warmers. Inconceivable.

Shelley and I have been getting ready for our move to Morgantown. This involves getting rid of books. We have way too many. 19 books on training. Cookbooks galore. Lots of literary novels that we will never read again. Want some?

More Epic(er)

Some more epic info. Met up with John Bruno the morning of Shelley's 50k. I saw him walking over to his car, saw that he had a moots on top, and asked him if he was riding today. Come to find out that he's prepping for Cohutta.

We looked at some maps, and made a "plan" to ride.

We rode up on single track for a while, then crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway and rocked a sweet descent.
We got to the bottom, skipped across the creek, and started the long push back up to the blue ridge parkway. My garmin was extremely unhappy with the slow rate of speed. The constant beeping pushed me onward and upward. Instead of more pushing/walking/ocassional riding, we opted for some riding on the parkway. The vistas were OK, if you're into that sort of thing.

After being passed by some pro roadies on the parkway, we turned back for some more singletrack. We passed "Camp Marty," I made a smart-alec comment about "bowling for runners" on the long, switchbacked singletrack descent, and after getting the stink-eye from a volunteer, proceeded to absolutely freakin rip the descent.

The bike was awesome all day. I have been loving the precision of the rigid fork, and rocking the fatty Kenda Nevegals made for lots of "gription" and just enough cushion. One runner said "Hey Man! Rocking the 29's huh?"

We ran into these ladies at the bottom. Do they look like they've run 21 miles? Didn't think so.


After miles of descending John and I decided to opt out of the quick and easy descent back to Sherando Lake. We both needed more quality time pushing our bikes.

We got it.

At the top John asked me "When did that turn into the trail of tears?"

Going down made it all worth it. We lost about 1500 feet of elevation in a mile. One loose, rocky, unbelievable mile. Fairly exposed, twisty, awesome.

After rocking the descent I dashed back to the finish line in time to snap some pics of the ladies crossing the finish line. All done. Over seven hours of running. Tough as a coffin nail.


Afterwords, we all evaluated our levels of exhaustion.


I think I hurt the least. That's what brakes and wheels do for you. Virginia is awesome, and I want to go back and ride on trails again. Someday.

A Little Epic?

Ch Check it out. Some pics and a quite write up of this past weekends Belmonte Endurance run.

First off, click here to bring up the elevation profile. My wife ran that. Ouch.

Any race that starts in the dark is epic. And during tonights "wintry mix" I really wanted to be in Virginia, rocking some singletrack.