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Good: Fun Bike Tours

You really can’t go wrong when you strap your tent to your bike and head off in search of the end to the yellow line.

Thursday: 6h49 minutes, 177.2km. I cooked lunch beside this beautiful little pond in Maine, though I will still nervous descending with the Trailer over 40km/h. Bandit Camped near Grafton NH.

Friday: 7h24, 193.2km. I missed a turn off the get-go, but ended up on really quite roads which lead me to a Historic Shaker Village. I ground up to the Killington Vermont Ski Area (39×25 just turning over at 50 rpm) and was pretty happy to be back there.

Saturday: Rest day, let the knees recover. Killington Vermont. Purchase an 12×27 cassette.

Sunday: Rte 100 to Lennoxdale MA. 8h11, 216.7km I started out pretty easily, and then realized I would be fighting darkness. Since I was in Vermont, I didn’t stop to cook lunch and just had a pint of Ben & Jerry’s streamside, before forging on. I was really really cracked from this ride. Max speed of 75km/h with the trailer, and by the end of the day was becoming comfortable with the way the bike was now handling.

Monday: 5h13 minutes, 141.8km. After Jacob’s ladder climb, things were mostly downhill. Springfield really sucked, and my ‘route’ was piggybacked on the interstate, so I went free-style. I couldn’t find a nice field at dusk and ended up tenting at the back of the cemetery in Barre MA. I also had my first mechanicals, with a bottle cage breaking off the trailer, and last thing at night, breaking a spoke on my front wheel. I also finished reading ‘Digital Fortress’.

Tuesday: 98km, 3h50. It turned out that I’d ridden here with Kurt Hackler once, so I headed his direction and borrowed a front wheel. He took over towing the trailer for a bit, and showed me a bike path into Nashua. I spent the night with the extended Bagshaw family, and actually did a road transfer to Amherst, which I was OK with because it took me farther, rather than closer to Maine. Today the bike started to creak a little, which later turned out to be the start of a crack.

Wednesday: 229.3km, 8h21 minutes. After a breakfast of fried tomatoes, I headed out. At 1pm I spent the last of my (randomly) budgeted $36 which I had brought for food on fig bars, and yes more ice cream. When I reached Saco Maine, I realized that things could get interesting, in Scarborough I found that my rear light had broken (but was fixable). Somewhere in Portland I got lost and really, really, bonked. In the final, flat, dark 20km my average speed dropped, and I groveled. Getting in at 8:30pm.

(if some of the distances seem longer, it’s because I my ‘mapless’ riding style saw me ‘lost’ more days then not. But when the destination is the Journey, who’s to say what is on and off route)

Why would I up and head off and ride over 40 hours in Six days? Why is my $5000 Cannondale pulling a trailer with a stove, camping gear, and eating deluxe ice cream around New England backroads part way through the race season? For me, pulling a trailer 200km over country roads, swimming in lakes, and camping in the bushes is good time.

Shaker Village in New Hampshire

2005: Serious Training

This summer I have missed 3 days of training (travel, the airplane lost my bike, and personal commitments) since January. Every other month I’ve had a week where I missed 3 days of training. This season I was on a team with a full time staff, and I decided to pick up my training, and see what I was really capapible of achieving. Heck I even moved into my coaches basement. I have skipped out on late evenings, field trips, pretty much kept the ‘Nat-Factor’ under wraps.

Doing the long base miles, and early season intervals all I could picture was winning races. Things were looking good, up until May I was in the top 5 every weekend I raced, and all year I have been setting personal best times during interval workouts.

Two weekends ago I won and set a new course record at the Maine Summer Sports Challenge Time trial, so it was good to get in another win in for the season.

Then last Saturday I did a crit (Maine Championships) on my own. I had fun, winning 5 primes, and getting second in the race helped. You can read about it in the Portland Newspaper today. I was second here in 2002 to my team mate Skip, and would have liked to win the big shiny cup this go around, but Robbie King was just faster than me. Story Here

I was bitter at the lack of team results, as well as my own lack of results, and went off on a little e-tirade a few weeks ago about it.
Do I dislike any of my (former) team mates? No
Did I dislike the fact that my team hadn’t won a race which we didn’t compose 15.8% or more of the field and that nothing and nobody, myself included, did anything about the situation? Yes
Is kicking a dying dog going to help it? No.
Did I mean to personally attack any of my team mates in this diary? No (trust me, you would have known) Dan, sorry.
Do most ‘complications’ in my life stem from the fact that I seldom think ahead? Yes
Was my ‘Trivia Question’ in poor taste? Yes. Rich, Pete, sorry.
Will I continue to buy Ital Pasta Noodles? Yes. They support cycling, and for me that’s a good enough reason to make their brand better than the other ones lining the shelves.
Do I own a set of Very orange shoes now? Yes
Am I a ‘Pro’ cyclist on the Ital Pasta team? NO longer
Did I watch a chimpanzee do back Flips on a galloping horse at the New York state fair last night? Yes
Am I going to race again this season? You’d better believe it.

So what happened when I showed up at the Chris Thater Criterium yesterday?
I was released from my team for ‘rider misconduct’ and the CAAD 8 was repo’d. Neither event was particularly unexpected. I had said I would be at the race, so to be truthful, and face the piper, I went.

Channel all hate-mail to: faatnaat (at) hotmail.com
I promise I won’t post it on line