First Outdoor Ride of 2009

I took the plunge today and completed my first outdoor ride of 2009. I had to pass up the previous few days of sunny, mild weather because I did not have a bike ready for the road. Saturday, I replaced a tube on my Kona Kula Primo and adjusted the rear disc break to amend some rubbing that was happening between the disc and the break pad. Looking at the weather last night on weatherunderground.com it looked like my only chance for a hypothermic free ride would be today. An arctic cold front is moving down from, well, the arctic and the next few days look to be pretty chilly. Like in the 20's chilly with some wind to boot. The hills are hard enough already without cold arctic wind blowing at ya.
I chose to do a 20 mile loop (I was riding a mountain bike with big knobbys on, so 20 hilly miles is sufficient for a first ride) that brought me out into the hinterlands of Fayette and Wayne. Good, quiet country roads with some good organic decomposition going on, as I rode by a couple of dairy farms with a winter full of manure just now thawing out. This disctinctive smelling decomp reminds me (as if I need reminding, I love it here!) of the rural personality of this land.
I was scheduled (I'm following a CTS training plan) to do several 3 minute zone 5 intervals (he calls them "power intervals." Lots of other coaches despise his naming of already understood techniques, but whether they like him or not, he's good. He's also wicked successful and probable filthy rich, which gives struggling coaches more fuel for their fire) today with specific interval lengths and specific rest periods. This kind of structure is difficult to duplicate on the kinds of roads we have here, so I went with fartlek training instead. Fartlek is Swedish for "speed play." It's perfect for me here because it is unstructured intensity of varying lengths and times. One "interval" may be a 12 second all out sprint, and another a 10 minute steady state effort and anything in between. I attacked every hill I encountered from short, but steep little 10 second out of the saddle sprints to 2-5 minute hills where I went at full VO2 max efforts (even higher than time trial effort. It hurts!) to the half mile and full one mile hills. These longer hills I did at time trial effort, which for me is at a HR between 175-179. To spice it up even more I sprinted DOWN a couple of hills (stay seated going down, unless you have a death wish. I currently don't.) to really turn the peddles over at about 150 rpms . My best out the saddle sprint is 175 rpms. I don't know if that's good or not. I don't sprint enough to really train it. Anyway, you can see I packed a lot in over 20 miles. All said, my legs and lungs felt strong. If I can cut a few pounds, I think I may have good season. It sure would be nice to be at the front for a race or two. I wonder what that feels like?

Speedster At The Spa

I just dropped off my road bike at Kennebec Bike and Ski for a well overdue overhaul/tune-up. The guys at the shop tweaked a few things for me last season, but I forced myself to do as much as possible on my own to save money and learn about bike maintenance. The new ultegra 10 speed cassette is on, so the rear derailleur needs to calibrated for that, the wheels "trued" (adjust any warps in the rims), cable cleaned and/or replaced if needed and shifting worked on. Plus I asked Steve (the shop owner) to check the bottom bracket (you only let someone you trust work on your bottom bracket. Sounds weird in a few ways, but true) as it has been creaking. Hopefully it's an easy fix. Bottom brackets can be finicky and expensive. Finally, I asked the guys to work some magic on my bike computer. I depend heavily on it for cadence info as well as trip miles, speed etc, but mostly cadence. It's not displaying cadence anymore, and even after a couple of hours fiddling with it, I couldn't get it to work, so maybe they can get it going for me.

I hung out for a while and shot the shit with Steve and Alex. Steve says he's going to run the 5K at KHS, so that's pretty cool. He's training for a half marathon for the late spring. Alex is a cool cat who wrenches for the shop. He's a pretty good rider and we talked about doing some rides together this spring. I hope it works out. I'll have pictures of the bike and shop when I pick it up next week.

Mark Hazzard 5k at KHS

I'll be running this 5K race next month. It's at KHS so, if you'd like to run or walk it I'd love to see you there! It should be a cool mix of faculty, students and local runners. I'm looking forward to it, plus its for a good man (I taught Mark's step daughter a few years ago) and a good cause. See the info below provided and organized by KHS faculty and triathlete Meg Bennett.

On Saturday, April 18th at 9:00 am Kents Hill will be holding a 5K walk/run to raise money for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) as a part of Mark Hazzard Day.
The Course: The race will start by the campus art gallery, wind around campus, turn right onto route 17, and right onto P-Ridge. At the top of P-Ridge there will be a turnaround point. There will be a water station at this point as well. On both the out and back sections of Route 17, participants must stay on the CAMPUS side of the road and inside the cones.

Note to students: Students who have athletic competitions that day must check with coaches first before signing up to run. Remember that the course can also be walked and that this is for a great cause!

Entry Fee: The entry fee will be $5 for ALL students and children under 16, and $12 for faculty/adults. Our goal is to have all of this money go to the local ALS group. All registrations need to be in by Friday, April 10th. Make checks payable to Kents Hill School and to the attention of Meghan Bennett. If you are planning on participating, please send me an email so that I have an idea of potential race numbers.

Volunteers: If you are unable to participate in the walk/run, volunteers are needed. Please contact me if you are interested in helping out!

Awards: As of now, awards will be given to the top male and female overall, and to the top KH male and female student. Stay tuned as there may be more awards given out.

Refreshments: There will be water, gatorade, and fruit at the finish line.

PLEASE JOIN US ON APRIL 18th TO SUPPORT A GREAT PERSON AND A GREAT CAUSE!

Roche Family Visit

My sister, Heather, her husband Michael and children Noah and Riley came north from Merrimack, MA for a visit this weekend. We had a great time of eating, drinking, laughing and sledding on the Kents Hill Ski Hill. The kids have a blast and the adults even climb aboard for a ride or two. A beautiful, warm day to spend outside.We ended the day with lunch at the Liberal Cup and then parted ways. Cheryl and I hope to have them up in August this year so they can see how beautiful this region is during the summer. I would love to take the kids fishing on our little boat that Guy gave me.

Rattle River Winter Hike

Some Pictures of Ross and Me during our annual winter back trip trip. This Year we went backpack to the Wild River Wilderness near Gorham, NH and did the Rattle River trail up towards Mount Mariah and Shelbourn Peak .We headed out Tuesday, March 10 and hiked a few hours up the Rattle River Trail near the new;y designated Wild River Wilderness in the White Mountains near the Maine, NH boarder. We like this area because it is little used, due to it's wild character. People like roads and mechanized access and Wilderness designation prohibits that, so no snow machines, ATV's etc in these woods. Just the way we like it! Anyway, we were planning on staying two nights but woke too sleet/freezing rain Wednesday morning and high winds. Miserable weather to climb/hike on a mountain ridge. We reluctantly packed back to the trail head and called it over. Perhaps one of these years we can put together a few days of decent weather. We'll try again next year.

Steady States Intervals, Snow Shoveling & Dave Does the Tour de Syracuse

My training the last two weeks have consisted of steady state intervals to start to crank up the intensity for the power intervals heading my way later in March and April. Cross training has been in the form of snow shoveling deep snow, pushing cars and trucks out of deep snow, walking through deep snow, and full body shivering as the high temps at Kents Hill are a whopping 23 degrees and lows -4 earlier this week. Finally, today we reached 41 degrees. Will it last? Doubt it! It's March, but someone tell that to Earth!

Good news! My brother, who is a fellow bike freak and recovering football player has just registered for the Tour de Syracuse in May. He will be competing in the road race and then the criterium (sort of like NASCAR, but on bikes. Complete with gnarly crashes. Stay in front, Dave away from the drama!). Check it out at http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=8014 to see the details. I have four words for you, Dave to live by for the next 8 weeks: Power Intervals, Descending Intervals. Have fun (Not!)