The new campfire thread...ooooh purrrrty!!!!!!

[Fenlason]

Good morning.. sunny.. and I have no idea what the temperature is. We did also get in a decent weight workout Saturday. We did ride yesterday afternoon. It had warmed to the teens.. but the wind had picked up wicked strong again. At the start of the ride.. I wasn't sure if I felt up to it. We had some pretty open fields.. and just trying to ride into the wind was tough.. and of course it was cold. The trails were also icy.. very very icy in places.. and in many places lumpy, rutty, very rough ice. The wind in places.. would blow you across the ice. The studs not gripping enough to hold you.

We got in a little over 20 miles. Where we turned.. we had another batch of open fields.. high up on a hill.. and the fields were all ice.. Laurie was getting tired.. and I wasn't all that motivated to go further myself. Often on this trail.. the wind is semi to the side.. so that it can be horrible riding back also.. Thankfully this time there were only a few fields.. that turn you back into it. Most of the way back wasn't so bad.

I am not sure what's up for today??

[toypusher]

Good Morning!

40 degrees and raining this morning. They say steady rain this morning and off and on showers this afternoon then heavy rain overnight. When they paved my driveway in Dec 15 it left some edges that were much higher than the adjacent lawn. So, finally yesterday my landlord finally brought in some fill dirt and I spent a couple hours raking and shoveling that around to get it right. Then put down some grass seed and today we have rain so it will be interesting to see how long it takes to grow. I had messed up about 6 ft of the walkway that goes to the front door while plowing snow with the ATV. So, I spend a couple hours redoing that yesterday too. Now today, I am feeling a bit sore.

Just doing some laundry now and have to go to my wife's office and pickup a file cabinet and deliver it to one of her fellow employees - if it is not raining too hard around 1 this afternoon.

[Fenlason]

Good morning.. I woke to 20's and snow. We received about and inch. It is supposed to warm up and rain…

I worked on wire lath for the support behind the porch fireplace. I have decided to plaster it. I had sort of hoped to get out for a long ride this morning.. but with rain and freezing rain forecast I knew that wouldn't be a good idea. Even with no rain.. this little bit of snow on top of the ice we had would be rather treacherous.

I will perhaps do some house work.. and a bunch of working out.. morning rides.. afternoon rides.. weight workouts…

Oh.. I did add under counter led lights to our porch bar.

Our Bkool race this week looks brutal.. It is hilly.. but not long big climbs like our first race.. this one is very changeable … up down up down.. and some fairly steep stuff. Of course it is sometimes hard to tell from the course profile.. I guess I shouldn't judge until I ride it. I think it is a 3 mile loop.. that we repeat 4 times. It is on Thursday again this week, but it starts at 6:00 instead of last weeks 6:30.

[Fenlason]

No weight workout today… but I got 4 rides in.. as well as a little house work and puttering around.

I did ride the race course this morning… and yuck it was tough. Craig had said there was a short 11.2 %grade.. which there was.. what he didn't say was that the 11.2 transitions directly into a longer 12.4%. There is a 17.6% down.. and all kinds of other dramatic changes.

After lunch I decided on a 12 mile mostly downhill crank.. it was a live ride… in warm up.. I came in missing a bit of the warm up.. and the ride "leader" cut the warm up short.. I was entered into it pretty cold. I got a good jump at the start.. but had two others catch up.. and we played cat and mouse some.. I found I was riding too hard to early in the ride.. and was running out of air.. I had to back off a couple of times.. and my two "playmates" got away.. got away and steadily pulled away. They got far enough away.. that I kind of dismissed them as uncatchable.

I settled in.. and tried to ride fairly steady.. sort of trying to use the ride itself as a warm up for the next one. The last mile or more.. was a gradual climb.. and by then I felt pretty good and was cranking pretty good.. and I found myself catching my "rabbits" I only beat the fastest one by a few seconds.. but I did catch and stay ahead of them.

After that I wasn't sure what I had.. but I had decided to re-try a 3 mile velodrome ride that I have done before.

It is a short hammer.. as hard as you can go.. for 3 miles. Again I took off a little too hard.. it hurt so bad.. I said the heck with it.. I sat up and backed off a lot. I knew what my previous fastest time was [or actually the average speed of that ride] I had semi recovered and saw my current ave. speed was still where I needed it.. so what the heck.. I thought I would retry. I was able to crank it out pretty good.. and took another 16 seconds off my time. [which is quite a bit at that short of distance.. at that speed]

I took a little break waiting for laurie to come home.. so we could ride again. We did the race course again. [her first] I wasn't exactly fresh but felt better on it. I rode fairly hard but didn't give it my all. I took 4:20 or so off my time.. which is fairly good.. but it's still not a fast time. I can do it faster.. but it's not a course that really favors me at all. I am pretty sure I will be just racing for the 10 points.

[Fenlason]

40's and rain today… with some pretty cold windy weather on the way for the weekend again. My legs are TOAST today. I woke at 2:00… with my body a furnace.. my metabolism was on overdrive.

I am not sure what's up for today? I will try to stretch and roll out my legs.. I plan on an upper body weight workout.

[Fenlason]

Well no weight workout again…

I started some spring cleaning in the bedroom… and have done a bit of stretching.. foam rolling etc. on the legs.. they are pretty sore. Actually walking /stairs, are ok.. but foam rolling and massage hurts.

Our rain did stop and we got some sun, but it was late enough not to contribute to the house heating.

[toypusher]

35 degrees and snowing this morning. It ha been snowing for about 2 hours but fortunately it is not sticking to the roads. Should be done by about 10 they are saying. Dn't think I will be doing much today.

[Fenlason]

Thursday more house cleaning.. and some riding. I did a warm up ride in the morning. I am finding if I do a harder ride quite a bit before my race.. I can recover.. but still have it help me.. then I don't need as much of a warm up right before the race. We did have a few more people for the race. I knew not to try and go with the front people…. but had my own people to race. There was a group of 4 of us. I knew one, but not the others. I did beat them. From what I heard Bill decided to take it easy, but we had another rider take first. We got first, 3rd, 4th and 5th.. back from that I don't remember. Since the races are open to anyone in the world.. but only those that are racing in our category… get counted for our series.. I don't know if the others were part of that or not. In either case we would have increased our lead.

Most of yesterday was a delivery for work… or several. We brought a treadmill down to a co-worker.. delivered a bike display rack to our other store.. picked up an elliptical there.. delivered that to a customer.. then went back to the other store, to pick up a bike for our store.

We are cold and windy again this weekend.. and it sounds like we have another blizzard on the way next week.

[toypusher]

It was cold (30 for a high I think and wind chills in the teens most of the day) and we had some snow. It was sunny so most of it is gone. However, we might be getting 10 inches or more starting overnight Monday into most of the day Tuesday. Should be most sunny and high about 40 tomorrow. Hope to get out to the range tomorrow with Mark.

[Fenlason]

Goodmorning. We are still down in the single digits. It was a quite cold weekend. Our temps didn't get out of the lower single digits.. and it was Very windy. I didn't end up doing much at all. I am not feeling all that great again. I did do a couple weight workouts.. an upper body.. then a leg workout. My Bkool subscription is expired.. I had hoped for some good rides yesterday. Bkool tried to charge my account.. but my thought it was fraudulent. Over the weekend, it didn't get straightened out. Hopefully today it will be.

I did do some figuring.. for projects. I am going to be needing to build some scaffolding to do the work we have planned for this side of the barn. I have looked at building.. vs purchasing etc. It is a weird area to get at, and the best will be just to build something.

I am also going to build a small addition to the other side of the barn for our new Snowdog. I have an accessible 12 foot wall on a section. I can build a small lean to on that end. I would be able to drive in one end and out the other. It will give me more interior wall for storage. Another place to hang shovels etc. or small shelves for other stuff.

I have also been thinking about building a small covered bridge for one of our trails. We had talked of it before.. and I saw a photo of one online. hmm and I just now figured where. I have been thinking about it all weekend. I do need another bridge or 3 else where. The one bridge [at the moment] that I do need is fairly big.. and it will slope a bit. It would also be harder to get at to work on. I then thought it might be wiser to build this more complex.. expensive bridge on our own property, vs on a trail else where . I have had possible plans for a couple of other bridges.. but neither of them felt right. Our existing bridge on Fuzzy Frog would be perfect. The bridge itself is level.. I can drive to it.. or within 20 feet of it. It is one we use a lot, and one that has some nice lines of sight to.. meaning we could see it.

I have to meet my mother this morning at the bank to sign some papers.. then perhaps I will head out to the woods for some more clean up.

We do have another good sized storm coming. We are expecting another 12" to 18".

[toypusher]

Morning! 20 degrees this morning, but we have some sun for now and it should get to upper 30s maybe 40 degrees this afternoon. But will be getting cloudy this afternoon and start snowing about 8 or 9 this evening and snow all day tomorrow. Prediction is for 12 to 18 inches. So, I have some prep to do today. I put the plow back on the ATV. Put a rod in at the end of the walkway that goes to the front door (I messed about 6 feet of it up last time I plowed) Also, going to put a couple shovels outside so they will be cold and the snow will not stick to them. I guess I will move the firepit on the patio so that I can just plow that also.

Mark might be coming over in a couple hours and we will go to the range for a while.

[Fenlason]

We had nice sun yesterday, and it got up to around 20. I met my mother at the bank and got things taken care of there. I then headed to the shop to see all the changes there. Originally there were a bunch of things mentioned, that they were looking to do, but some of it was happening slowly. Our busy season isn't that far away.. so we weren't sure IF it was going to happen. Well stuff has started happening again.

I met Laurie for lunch, then came home and headed to the woods. I got a bit of clean up done. I found a small tree here and there the cut and clean up. Then I found an area that was a mess.. or a semi mess. There were a dozen plus, trees in an area. Most were just severely bent over and in the trail, others were actually broken off.

The SnowDog and tool set up worked good. It needs more work, or a few other things done. I wore a coat heading out. and then once working, I took it off. It was sort of in the way of trying to take the saw in and out of it's area. I need a better place for that. A better place to put my water. I expected with use, I would come up with some changes or further additions to make.

They are saying most of the state will get 12" to 18"… a little less further down east, but they are saying a bubble of an area… including our area… that is expected to get up 24"

I am debating getting out for a ride this morning before it starts. I am not sure if I will just play around on our trails.. or head out further.

[toypusher]

We got about a foot of snow so far. It is wet underneath and hard to shovel or plow. It took me over 2 hours with the ATV to plow the driveway and patio. And it is still not all pushed back as far as I would like. Might have to have the landlord come over with bigger equipment and push some of it back more. Our road has not been plowed yet, but hopefully sometime soon. It has warmed to about 33, but is very windy still and snowing off and on.

[Fenlason]

It has gotten snowier.. and windier here… before it got dark our visibility across the lawn was down around 100 feet. Our heavy snow is supposed to be coming tonight. The rear deck looks like it is in the 14"-16" range so far.

I did go down to look at a trail bridge. I don't recall If I mentioned it here.. but we have been thinking about putting in a small covered bridge on our trails somewhere. We decided that on us was smarter.. than else where… and we have chosen modifying an existing bridge. It is perhaps one of our most used bridges. It's in a spot where it can be seen some. It is also in a place that we can drive close to with the RTV… and in a spot that won't be too bad to work on.

So anyways I went down to look at it again and to take some measurements. I wasn't able to measure the length for the ends still had a bit of snow on them. I did do some drawing and planning on it today.

I finally got our bkool accounts taken care of.. and got some rides in. I got four in, in total. For a total of 28.5 miles. I did 2 courses.. one of them 3 times. I rode it.. then tried it faster…and was still 2 seconds slower than someone I was trying to catch. I tried it again.. but I was tired.. and had to draft my ghost for the first 4 miles.. the last two I took off on my own.. and it was tough… but I did get faster yet.

[toypusher]

17 degrees this morning. Breezy, but was windy all night and going to get pretty windy through the day today. Took my wife to work and the roads for the most part were not too bad. There is a drifting problem for sure though.

Doing some laundry and my go out to do some shoveling a bit later, but not sure on that.