Blowing & Drifting

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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Here’s how my body and my face looked just a few minutes after the end of Almanzo 100. Not pictured: the extreme soreness in my neck, the crazy butt cramps (TMI?), or the insane toe-to-knee mud that was washed off around mile 80 when we had to wade through a creek!

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Seven days from right now, I will (with luck) be well done with the Almanzo 100 – my big spring race, 100 miles of gravel roads around Spring Valley, Minnesota. I’ve been training hard since well before the snow melted, and I’ve liked the way my work has been paying off. I’ve never felt fitter [...]

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Driving back yesterday from seeing friends in Rochester, I realized that it has been a damn good week – probably one of the best “usual” weeks ever. Last Sunday was a pretty uneventful day around the house, but I got to spend some great time with the girls and enjoyed a nice 90-minute ride in [...]

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Today I read a story in a Runner’s World special issue (unfortunately not online, though excerpted here, and not unlike this other RW story on the race) about the Dipsea Race, a 7.5 mile trail race every June in Marin County, California, from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach – up and down and up and down [...]

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Today I was heading back home at the end of my ride when I came up on three guys riding along at roughly my pace. With my race coming up in just under three weeks, I need to get some practice riding in more or less proximity to others, and this seemed like a good [...]

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