HMC Haunted Forest

Wanna go for a ride?

Memory From Last Autumn

Still Under Snow

Ready for Summer

After a few cold winter rides, I am all ready for summer.

The photo was taken at HMC trailhead. Didn't go in because hunting is going on today.

One Week from SM100

It's time to get ready for the race. I'll drive to the camping ground Saturday and spend the night there. Sunday hopefully I will finish the 100 mile course early enough that I can eat some stuff before I head back home.

And no, no new bike purchase this time. I'll take the Vicious, full rigid ss geared at 32x18. Weighed the bike last night, 21.5 lb with pedals and bottle cages :)

Memorial Day Weekend

Sunday 5/25/08: I didn't realize what I had signed up for until seeing Denis and Loic in Schaeffer at 8 am. Probably Denis wanted to show Loic all the parks around the area, The three of us went on the MoCo Epic ride. We did a small loop in Schaeffer, then HMC-BH-LB-LM-SG-CL and back to Schaeffer. Stopped only a few times to take pictures or have snacks. 41.5 miles and 5 hours total time. I call the loop MoCo Epic Minor because some trails in various parks were skipped. Photo credit: Denis

Monday 5/26/08: The ride was organized by MORE and led by Chris. A big group, 16 riders, showed up. The raceboys in the front were pulling pretty fast pace. I took the sweeper's roll and tried by best not to drop anyone. Throughout the HMC/BH out and back only one rider dropped to take an easier pace. A few more left in the Schaeffer parking lot. About 10 of us pressed on for a loop in Schaeffer. We finished in about 3.5 hours and covered about 27.5 miles of trails. Photo credit: Aaron

On the way back to Schaeffer, I got a bee in between my left eye and the riding glasses. The bee panicked, and so did I. Here was the sequence of events (as I can recall):

1. My left eye felt something was getting dangerously close and told the eyelids (both) to go into emergency shutdown mode;
2. The eyelid was stun, firing tremendous pain signals to the brain;
3. My brain sent instruction to my hands: "hey, drop everything and take care of this situation";
4. I ejected the riding glasses with both of my hands, probably with a force that could throw a cow over 100 feet. Meanwhile, my legs were pre-occupied and still kept on pedaling;
5. Riding with no hands and no sight on a trail, to me it's a sure recipe for crashing, and it did happen;
6. I got up, pulled myself together, looked around but couldn't find my riding glasses, hopped on bike and left, fearing there was an army of bees ready to launch.

Luckily I wasn't too allergic to bee stings. I was even able to finished the ride in Schaeffer.

Now my left eye is itchy and swollen.

17 Laps

I arrived at the farm around 0840, went ahead and got my packet and marking. A few minutes later Chris pulled in. We set up the camp site together with Tim's team, did some last minute wrenching, and at 1100 the race started. Chris went first and we alternated every lap. About 30 minutes into my first lap I had a flat. Once I got back to the camp site I slapped on a tubeless front wheel, and never had any mechanical since.

Chris pulled some fast low 30 minutes laps and I did high 30 minutes. Half time passed we were on the teams 11th lap. When the lights turned on things started to slow down. We ended up with 17 laps and called it a day to enjoy pizza and bluegrass music.

The GPS trace looks horrible and I believe that's because of its smart recording. The unit simply doesn't have enough memory to handle long rides. Chris' is here (his first lap wasn't recorded).

Overall, I only had one flat, one OTB endo, and a couple out of pedal slips. I can live with that.

[Update 4/21/2008: Results are in] 17 laps, 12:07:54 total time.
1: 39:17 39:17
2: 48:34 1:27:51
3: 33:27 2:01:17
4: 37:24 2:38:40
5: 34:30 3:13:09
6: 38:52 3:52:01
7: 36:51 4:28:51
8: 40:01 5:08:51
9: 37:42 5:46:32
10: 41:36 6:28:08
11: 36:47 7:04:55
12: 38:42 7:43:37
13: 38:37 8:22:13
14: 43:05 9:05:18
15: 54:37 9:59:54
16: 1:19:02 11:18:56
17: 48:59 12:07:54

FC Social Aid and Pleasure Club

Just signed up for the Leesburg Bakers Dozen 13 hours race in a 2-man team. The FC Social Aid and Pleasure Club is in full swing now. There is a little less than a month time for me to get into shape so I can at least finish the race. Bye-bye fat, hello muscles :)
(photo credit: denisvtt)