Blowing & Drifting

Saturday morning, I drove up to Elm Creek park in Champlin, Minnesota, for the second running of the Fatbike Frozen Forty race. I didn’t know what to expect, since I hadn’t trained much for the race and have done all my racing on gravel roads, but I was eager for the chance to ride my [...]

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Though I’m not quite sure what I’m getting myself into, I am doing this race on Saturday morning. I am severely undertrained, but adrenaline should compensate for at least 10% of my fitness shortfall. I hope my beard can make up the rest. If nothing else, I’ll have some painful fun on the Beast!

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Feeling a little unprepared for a fatbike race I’m planning to do on Saturday, I spent quite a bit of time on the Beast this last weekend – trying my winter gear, testing my legs, figuring out riding positions, feeling the wintry mix on my face, learning the best way to fly off my bike [...]

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By 1995, I had followed the Tour de France semi-seriously – or about as seriously as you could from rural Michigan before the Internet – for about a decade, going back to 1986, when Greg LeMond won the first of his three Tour titles and established the United States as a force in international cycling. [...]

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Right here, the best part of Sunday: a bike ride with the girls up to campus and back.

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I’ll write my usual logorrheic post or five about the magnificence of the Heck of the North over the next few days, but I wanted to post right away about a nice moment of sportsmanship toward the end of the race, after about 95 miles of fantastic gravel roads and woodland trails. I had been [...]

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The last seven days have been about as high a peak in my cycling life as I’ve ever experience. I learned early in the week that I’d finished ninth (out of 66 finishers) in last Saturday’s Inspiration 100 – a place far, far better than I’d ever expected. Friday, I finally became a two-bike man [...]

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Saturday, I raced the Inspiration 100 in Garfield, Minnesota. The event was my third gravel century race of the summer, and maybe the most fun. The Almanzo in May was brutal and the Dirty Benjamin in June was fast, but the Inspiration was pretty much a blast from start to finish – except for a few [...]

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My ride on Sunday was notable in that I finally got my first dog bite. Riding down a stretch of road I’ve covered many times, a fairly large Lab-ish dog came barreling out of a farmyard, barking like a maniac. White Fang headed me off, then circled back as I slowed down, studied my legs, [...]

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Spend considerable time at the pool. Possess unusually large hands and feet. Relish traveling quickly under my own power. Make funny faces while exercising. Enjoy wearing shiny eyewear. Have a totally hairless torso.

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Ten days, my front bike wheel locked up during my morning commute. The wheel had been acting funny on a ride the night before, but it froze completely when I was about half way to work. I had to ride the rest of the way with the wheel barely held into the fork – a [...]

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After finishing my workout at the gym on Wednesday afternoon – one of the greaterrible cross-training sessions masterminded by Thad Caron, a pretty good personal trainer – I wondered why I was feeling so goddamn wasted. Every muscle group ached, and my arms and legs had that heavy overused feeling. So I tallied up the [...]

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At 8 a.m. tomorrow, I’ll start my second 100-mile gravel race of the year, the West Side Dirty Benjamin, which runs around Chaska, Minnesota. I’m looking forward to the race, but I’ve never entered an event with less serious preparation: I didn’t pay any attention to eating good carbs this week, I haven’t done much [...]

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I realized the other day that I hardly ever ride my bike for pure pleasure, the way a kid might. To be sure, I have a lot of fun riding my bike, whether commuting, running errands, training, or racing, but I never just ride around for the sake of riding around. On realizing this, I [...]

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THE DAY BEFORE Vivi inflating my bike tires. 45psi worked great! Vivi helping me make my trail mix, of which I brought way too much. RACE DAY The race’s staging area, full of cars and even fuller of bikes and riders. A great, inspiring sight. At the start, racers packing in. Me on the start [...]

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