Blowing & Drifting

If Mother Nature respected my wishes, She would have blanketed southern Minnesota in snow six weeks ago. In fact, I would have been happy with snow six days ago. But we’re still snowless here, so I figured that a solid gravel-road ride could stand in for my three-year streak of skiing on Christmas Day. It [...]

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Wednesday, I took the day off to do a long gravel ride, my first substantial bike outing after the Almanzo way back in May. I had initially intended to do an all-day century, but then I decided that my legs probably couldn’t handle a hundred miles of gravel cycling. Luckily, the guys down at my [...]

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At 9:00 a.m. today, I started the Big Woods Run half-marathon, the longest running race I’ve done to date. I trained pretty hard for the race, and that training paid off in a good effort that wound up being a few minutes behind my target. But I had a lot of fun, and certainly feel [...]

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I’ve been training pretty seriously since July for the Big Woods Run half marathon on October 15 – “seriously” meaning that I’ve been getting coaching advice from an Internet friend who’s a pretty fast runner/cyclist/triathlete. The regimen she’s worked out for me has been pretty tough – some two-a-day workouts, long runs that are longer [...]

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Sunday, I went with the girls to their swimming lessons, offered by Making Waves swim school, which apparently specializes in aquatic miracles. A year ago, Julia would literally cry if she got her face wet in the tub. All summer, and now into the fall, she’s happily swimming underwater, jumping into deep water, and generally [...]

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Thursday afternoon, the girls decided that they’d finish Shannon’s run with her. They duly changed into their own running skirts and tee shirts, then joined their mom for a lap around the block. They actually ran with her, every step, and enjoyed it. I managed to take this shot just as they finished.

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Shannon took this rather nice picture of me in the 15k road race that I ran earlier this month. I’m the one wearing an actual shirt.

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Sunday morning, I ran the 15km road race that’s a perennial part of Northfield’s huge Defeat of Jesse James Days festival. I ran the 5km event a few times a few years ago, and I’ve long wanted to step up to the “big race.” This spring, after finishing the Almanzo cycling race, I figured I [...]

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This hill is short and not very steep, but I love the way it seems to just end, rather than start to descend - in my imagination, like some of the great summits in the Tour de France. This one’s about 99% shorter than those climbs, though…

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After finishing the Almanzo 100 in May, my thoughts turned – as they do – to writing something about it. My two-part race report was a start (May 16 and May 20), but I was lucky enough to be able to turn those blog posts into something more like a real essay, one that’s just [...]

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Right now, a Northfield cyclist named Ben Oney is 1900 miles into Tour Divide, an insane bike race that starts in Banff, Alberta, and follows the Continental Divide all the way down Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on the Mexican border. (You can track Ben online; he’s currently about 1,900 miles – yes, miles – into [...]

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Today was my fist ride since the Almanzo 100, my first pain-free workout in three weeks, and my first ride in short sleevesince last fall! The view – though a bit gloomy – wasn’t bad, either.

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In the lengthy first part of my Almanzo 100 race report, I dealt mostly with the overall shape of the experience for me. This second part relates some details that I want to remember, that fill out the Part I post, and that might be interesting to other cyclists who want to ride the Almanzo, [...]

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Trying to accommodate my athletic-endeavor verbosity, I’ve divided my race report into two pieces: this summary of the race and a separate, more detailed description of the experience, to follow soon. These 800-odd words are the one to read if you’re just passingly curious. And if you’re not even that, I don’t blame you! The [...]

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The torrent of stuff about the Almanzo 100 is just starting to trickle onto the web, but here are a few good items. First, the race director, Chris Skogen – who stayed the finish line to shake the hand of every single finisher, even the poor bastards who finished at 11 p.m. – shot this [...]

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