living-fast

Catching Up

2010-10-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm long overdue for an update. Been a busy year with some great things to pass along - all in time. Here's what I'm thinking of talking about, thoughts?

- Review of my 'new' Motobecane Fly Ti 29er - lots of quality miles in wide-ranging events by now.
- Thoughts on bike-camping with youngsters (son and I did 4 days, 220 miles together)
- General update on the events of my season - Mountains of Misery (tandem with Navenka), 12 Hours of Cranky Monkey (3rd in class), Wilderness 101, Shenandoah Mt 100, bike trip... still have a trip to the Grand Canyon (Rim to Rim to Rim!) coming this month and the JFK 50 in November...

Lots of other topics come to mind. Happy to hear your ideas.

Best, d2g

The Balance

2009-08-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

Maintaining a balance between family, fitness, work, and fun is the perennial challenge. Like my favorite guitarist says, "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug..." Mark Knopfler has it right.

Lately, I've been the bug. But the trick is to keep moving forward, fighting to restore the balance when it makes sense, and just riding the wave when fighting won't help.

Sometimes, you have to know when to just step back from things and let the situation settle down a bit - let something go while other things occupy a larger proportion of time than they should.

Which places you atop a slippery slope - skipping out on the things that make you whole even for a short time leads to longer and longer periods of imbalance... next thing you know, you wake up and it's been weeks, maybe even months since you last did that thing you miss.

I've often said that I've yet to meet someone who'd died wishing they'd worked another day. And that my day job constantly gets in the way of my hobbies... but at the end of the day, our day job tends to be the more definitive factor in our longer life, the thing that people most remember us for, the thing that pays the bills and creates new opportunity to do like George Carlin said, "Buy a bigger house to keep your stuff."

There's a symbiosis between our day job, our hobbies, and our family life - each, in balance, makes the others better somehow. As much as we'd like to believe there's a 'place' we'll go and find some kind of static situation, a utopian life where things just magically work out, well, that's probably never going to happen.

Or is it?

I think they call it retirement.

But first we have to pay the bills...

Validation

2009-07-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've been racing bikes for over 22 years. I've been lucky to have done very well on occasion, and above average as a rule. These days, I race more out of enjoyment of the challenge than a need to prove something to myself or win. My victories are internal - finding a balance in life that keeps me growing and excited about new things, and new accomplishments to add to my kit bag.

I also have a young family and a pretty demanding job. Because of this, my approach to training has changed. It's more about enjoying the ride than simply logging the miles. Along the way, that shift in perspective allowed me to develop a new mindset - one that seeks to get the most benefit out of each experience. But don't mistake my mindset for a lack of caring about results - the difference is that I grade my results against my sense of balance in my life, as opposed to an absolute of results against others with very different demands and time investments. There are times when I choose to participate, and times I choose to fight for wins.

It's always nice to see your personal beliefs supported by respected, experienced people. As someone with time management challenges, I'm always looking for ways to get the most out of my training time. Paraphrasing Joe Friel's books, who first made me think about this, I try to get the very most out of the very least. Better is the enemy of good enough.

Chris Carmichael (aka Lance Armstrong's coach for a really long time) has finished a new book that brings together some things that another author, Dr Michael Ross, MD, convinced me of years ago - that you really can do well on a limited training time budget. Carmichael's new book talks about training on six hours a week. Most weeks I manage 6-10 hours both cycling and running, and in fact did pretty well in an Ironman on an average of 12 hours a week a couple years back. I'm a believer that quality matters far more than quantity.

I haven't gotten my hands on Carmichael's new book, but I read an excerpt that sounds suspiciously parallel to the training program I've aimed to follow for three years now - intervals and focused, high intensity training. I pre-ordered the book and look forward to reading it!

I'm also using a new piece of software that I'll try and talk more about in coming months - it pairs with my Suunto T6 to analyze and help manage my training program. The software is from Firstbeat and it's called "Athlete". What it does is help me interpret what the HRM data I collect really means and how it translates into fitness over time; it helps me manage my training load and intensity, and I can say that even with a relatively short time using it I've improved my fitness and my understanding of periodized training. It's not a hard science, but having scientific tools definitely adds value and efficiency.

The other key ingredient for me continues to be my Tacx Fortius trainer. We have two of them now, and in the interest of full disclosure, I'm part of the Tacx test team here in North America, and will be part of their 2010 sales brochure. But I'm not paid and I bought the system because it's easily the best training tool I've ever owned. This time of year, I still log between a third and half my training time indoors. Come winter, it'll be even higher.

Most important, I have the data to show the impact of my training.

I wish I had this stuff 20 years ago.

Next post: Inspiration: Sources, impact, and other random thoughts.

Ride on! -d2g

2009-07-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

2009-07-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

12 Hours of Cranky Monkey - June 09 - Quantico, VA

6th of 28 in my race class (35+ Masters)

Top 20 of about 175 solo riders and teams

Started training in March 09 after 9+ months off

Exorcising

2009-07-15T11:52:00.001-07:00

I've always enjoyed running in DC. Have a pretty much unlimited number of great options, from totally urban to some surprisingly un-urban trails right smack in the middle of all the chaos.

Being assigned elsewhere, it's been about 4 years since I did any real running here; in the last couple months I've started getting back out there again. Did one of my staple runs today, with a bit of a twist.

Felt pretty crummy this morning, haven't been sleeping all that well for a few nights. But the two Army guys in my office, a Staff Sergeant and a Major, were heading out to run to Lincoln Memorial and do a few repeats on the stairs just above the Potomac. So I dragged myself along. We did 6-8 stair repeats, then the Major and I decided to continue on toward Georgetown and the Key Bridge; along the way, he asked if I wanted to run the stairs from the Exorcist movie- he'd seen them but never run them. It'd been a while, so I thought, why not?

Things have changed a bit along the river, mostly for the better with new sidewalks/trails and better access- but the road crossings are still like Frogger with consequences...

We ambled over toward Georgetown along the river, which is still running higher than I remember in 11 years. I peeked into the Washington Canoe Club, where I'm a member but haven't been inside for three years after being away, and thumped up the wooden staircase to the C&O canal, right into the canal boat being towed by two horses for tourists and historians. Good thing the railroad won that race...

We crossed over and found the staircase, the long one from the movie, and skipped up to the top. It's probably about a 70-80 foot vertical, maybe a hundred feet, but pretty steep, in three pitches. Mark commented that he thought someone wrote the speed records on the steps somewhere, so of course we had to look around...

At the top are three numbers... #758, #750, #743 if memory serves. 7.50 seconds? We had to do a test and see if it's possible - we figured it took about 20 seconds for us to get up there... so Mark went to the bottom and I timed him half-way - about 6.5 seconds, and he was moving pretty fast... so could someone actually do the climb under 7.5 seconds? I'd like to see that.

The rest of the run was relaxed, back over the Key Bridge and along the south side of the Potomac, past Roosevelt Island and to the Pentagon. A quick set of upper-body calisthenics, a little socializing, and back to work... I think it was about 6.5 miles.

But who really cares when it's that nice outside? Sometimes you just need to enjoy the ride... or run...

I'm Back?

2009-07-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a long time. Last post almost 16 months ago...

Going to try and do a better job of keeping this going now. Will shift gears a bit and document my preparation and training for upcoming events, maybe a little bit of other stuff here and there.

I'm working in the Pentagon again, for Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I'm a Deputy to his Special Assistant for Legislative Affairs, doing liaison work with Congress for many topics and functions. It's interesting.

My next big event is the Shenandoah Mt 100, a back-country mountain bike race on Labor Day weekend. It's 100 miles in the Shenandoah Mountains along the Virginia-West Virginia state borders. Lots of single-track, some fire roads, and plenty of climbing - about 15,000 feet by most estimates.

As prep, I did the 12 Hours of Cranky Monkey a couple weeks ago. Was 6th of 28 in my class (35+ Masters), managed over 82 miles after 3 months of training. So I have a ways to go to make 100 miles under 10 hours but that was a great kick start. My heart rate download showed that I worked too hard the first 3-4 hours, HR at about 160 when it should have been about 140. So that was a good reminder of pacing strategies and their impact on fatigue. More on that down the road.

Navenka and I rode the Mountains of Misery 200K on our tandem over Memorial Weekend - I missed a turn that added between 15-20 miles so we called it a day at 118 miles with about 20 more to go out of what was supposed to be 126. Navenka's longest ride before that day was 60 miles so I give her HUGE credit for her effort.

We're going to ride the Reston Century in late August; I'll ride my mountain bike and Navenka her road bike. This will be a final tune-up day for me before SM100.

I'm doing the Richmond Marathon on 14 November. Am on track for my game plan there, to qualify for Boston, which will require a 3:20 finishing time, or a 7:38 pace. I'm running 9+ miles on hilly courses at about that pace with a heart rate of 145, so things are progressing. The focus will shift after SM100 to more running, although I may enter the EX2 Adventures "Day of Endurance" in October, 3 hours of trail running followed by 6 hours of mountain biking. I should be in respectable condition for that.

In December, I'll run a 50K trail run that's one of my favorites, along the Bull Run trail over much of the Bull Run Run 50-miler course that I hope to do for the second time next spring.

Over the winter, I'm aiming to return to Minnesota for the Arrowhead 135 once again. That's the real focus...

So I have a few things to keep me busy.

Hope you are doing great and enjoying your own adventures!

Best, d2g

Health Check

2008-02-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you had a complete physical? I had one last year for the first time in years. All was good but it was nice to have my mind put at ease.

I did a home test of my cholesterol this morning. The kits cost $20 at the drugstore. The tests claim to be as good as the doctor's office (97 percent accurate), require no fasting- although I did mine after waking up this morning. I'll do another one (the kit included two tests) tomorrow, see if they correlate, and then do one at the doctor's office just to see if the advertised accuracy is true for me or not... the only thing they don't do is tell you HDL/LDL ratios. I'll get that from the Doc but I think it's not that critical if your overall is really low anyway. Still, better is better.

The hardest part was popping my finger to get a blood sample. I broke both of the kit lancets (bad design I think... ;-) and ended up using my pointy river knife, old-school Rambo-fashion.

It was significantly lower than one I did 4 years ago, right after I left a job in the Pentagon. It was decent then. Before I declare victory, I'll test again and see how it goes.

Blood pressure-- my BP without coffee is excellent. If I have even one cup in the AM, my BP at the end of the day is still very high. One cup. How does it affect you???

You should check yours soon too.

So where do you find a frozen pirate??

In the arrrrrghctic!

Have a great day!

-d2g

Training for Endurance Racing in the Real World

2008-02-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling like I'm starting to turn the corner in understanding my body better than ever. Here are a few of the things that have helped...

I like all of the articles below. I've used a Suunto T6 for nearly 3 years now and the system (EPOC) flat out works if you learn and use it. The trick is learning to manipulate training volume, intensity and rest periods to get more from the work you do. The other issue is getting the most for a limited time budget-- also known as living in the real world...

An article on the Suunto T6 and the basic science behind it: Here

An article that adds more discussion about the value of intervals: Here

An thought-provoking article on negative split racing by Joe Friel: Here

I would submit my performance in the 2007 Horribly Hilly Hundreds 200K (at least top 5), 24 Hours of 9-Mile (25th in Open division despite 3 hours fixing my bike), and the 2008 Arrowhead (5th, one of only 7 to ever finish sub-24 hours) as proof that intervals work for endurance athletes. My longest rides all year last year were 4-5 hours, and they all included hill repeats or intervals. Two of those races were 24 hours long, one was 8 hours long. In each case, the limiting factor was my ability to manage my early pace and nutrition rather than being fit. I am absolutely convinced that my late-race performance was only limited by the earlier mistakes (include fighting the snow conditions in Arrowhead with wrong tire pressures as well).

I know in my heart that the people who believe you have to go long to be ready to go long are wrong. It's about getting yourself to a fitness level where you have a higher horsepower reserve to draw from, having the horsepower to race at a lower overall percentage of your max, and managing your effort, nutrition, and equipment choice/setup to give you the best long-term performance.

Perhaps the hardest lesson to learn, one I continue to wrestle with, is that saving a few minutes early by going hard in a long event can cost many times the savings on the other end. The second-most difficult lesson is calorie and water intake. I continue to learn more about that every race. Here's another great Joe Friel article on eating: Here

Navenka and I watched an amazing program on eating on Discovery Health last night. Everyone should be required to watch the program. It was called 'The Truth About Food' and dealt with critical nutritional questions like the impact of high-carb vs high-protein or high-fat diets and weight management, and so many other truly amazing issues like the impact of portion size on consumption... fascinating and useful. We're very nutrition-conscious yet learned even more and resolved to do even better based on what we saw. Their web site has lots of great stuff. Here's the Discovery Health Web Site (Brings up the TV sked, look around for more)

Here's the real secret to endurance racing-- Balance. Consistency. Focus. Preparation. Connecting the dots between actions and impact over time.

I hope this is useful and interesting.

Cheers,

d2g

Is it about the bike?

2008-02-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

Proof that cycling is as much about fashion as anything... and that riders matter FAR more than gear...

Next time you debate how much faster that new gadget or frame will really make you, consider this: http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id=tech/2008/features/tdl_local_rides

Take note of the number of people competing at a World-Class level with 'clearly' second-tier equipment.

Guess I'd better get back on my TdF-quality (circa 2000) titanium framed, carbon forked wonder rocket and turn the pedals a little harder and longer. Maybe it's me after all...

And maybe those chocolate chip cookies after lunch weren't such a great idea.

But man were they good! Raw dough. Yummmm.

Best to all... I'm getting ready for Trans-Iowa IV in April. 300+ miles on gravel roads. Should be great training for this year's 24-hour nationals in August. And the 200K in June...

-d2g

Updated Arrowhead Video

2008-02-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

To watch the video, click on the triangle at the lower left corner of the video screen below text!!

I want to express my sincere admiration for all my compadres in the Arrowhead, and my gratitude for all those who support our habit-- families, friends, volunteers, and sponsors, too of course.

In my attempts to explain this race to others, hard as it may be to believe, I come up short for words. So this year, I decided to try a new way...

The video below was pulled together from the photos and videos that Rick Mangan took (and a small few I did) during the race-- I hope it brings back some quality memories for all and represents the spirit of this awesome event!! It took at least 12 hours to assemble it. We ALL owe Rick HUGE props for his commitment to taking nearly 400 photos during the event. I used around half of them here I think. That's actually a really good success ratio in photography. I did the 'fly-throughs' in Google Earth using a special controller (a Contour ShuttlePRO) that I programmed to make it easier to 'maneuver.' The hills are slightly exaggerated to make them easier to see, and the course isn't exact but you get the idea which is the point.

I have so many things that I've learned from both years-- too many to put into words frankly. I'm trying to follow through with something that didn't pan out last year and publish something special that's (hopefully) worth reading. I have two pieces that I'm working, one is on the experience of racing ultra-distance events, and the other is about preparing for them.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the video! -d2g

TO play the video, click on the screen below:

Freezin' For No Reason

2008-02-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

The 2008 Arrowhead Winter Ultra has concluded and was a spectacular event as always. I managed to finish 5th overall, in 23 hours and 52 minutes, with no sleep, and learned as much as I did last year. It is among my favorite events I have ever done, and I've met some truly incredible people out there. Thanks to so many who supported me both spiritually and otherwise... especially my family, who were dealing with a sick 10-month old while I was out "Freezin' for No Reason..." Greg Pattison and I rode the second half of the course to the finish together, and I know that his camaraderie (and pump!) made a HUGE difference.

I owe a VERY special thanks to my brother, Todd, for helping me out with a new winter-specific bike this year, and for his incredible trail support out there. He logged over 400 miles on a snowmobile in two days while watching over and rescuing racers. Thanks as well to his good friend Ron for his support too! That Surly Pugsley made an incredible difference in my results. John Haines at Marinette Cycle was also amazingly helpful, as were all our local Marinette cycling friends who are like family to Navenka and me...

More to follow soon here, including a short video full of pictures from the race and my story of how it all unfolded...

Winterfun 2008 Video!

2008-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

Living Fast in a Northern Wisconsin winter... a video below for you... click on the controls at the bottom... That's our son Lance, who's 4, on a snowmobile from his uncle Todd...

Enjoy! -d2g

Measuring and Improving Fitness - Concepts

2008-01-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Some of us exercise just to 'keep fit' while others exercise to maximize performance at a given task. Where is the line between those two things and what, really is 'fitness'? That is hard to really say, and science doesn't do a lot to help us draw the line. But I know this much-- everyone I've ever met says the same thing after they finish an event: "Next time, I'd like to do it faster..."

Science is just beginning to give us a real recipe for doing just that. The strange thing is that there is no single plan that works for everyone. We all need different things, and respond in different ways to each training session, and, ultimately, have different levels of potential. What matters isn't how we compare to others-- it's how close we are to our own upper limits. My suspicion is that most of us have no idea where our real limits lie.

But we do know this much-- improvements in fitness only come when we operate near our current limits in a particular area of fitness. It used to be thought that endurance only came from training over longer and longer distances. Science is proving that there is another way, but there is a still-bewildering relationship between the role or value of intensity versus volume, one where we are just beginning to learn the crossover between short, intense efforts and endurance. It is becoming clear that intensity matters more than total time when it comes to improved fitness, even in endurance. What is still unclear for endurance sports is the true value of (or need for) long distance, high-volume training as it relates to endurance- called for years 'LSD' or long, slow distance. Put another way- can we do it all with interval training? The science more and more seems to be pointing toward 'yes'. The science is more and more pointing toward LSD training as being 'junk miles.' Can we totally rule out LSD yet? I haven' t found that study.

But there are challenges with this idea of doing it all with intervals-- truly high intensity is hard to maintain over long periods of time-- our mental focus and accumulated physical fatigue tends to drive us in a sine wave of intensity, with periods where we can drive hard followed by periods where we don't feel as committed or able to push our limits. The good news is that science is proving this to be necessary toward our goal of higher performance. So we need periods where we maintain, along with periods where we stretch our limits.

The bottom line? We need a full menu of activity types in order to reach our potential. Easy, hard, short long in all combinations. The trick is avoiding the stuff in the middle.

I'd like to take a bit of time to establish some basic thoughts on how we measure our fitness. From there, we'll build on the tools that help us construct and guide our training program. You may not understand all of this until you live through it a few times, so keep coming back to the concepts and you'll find over time that things make more sense. You might also find a desire to incorporate more measurement into your training program. Start simple and add on. Even if you don't want to measure down to the last intra-beat ms duration of heart rate or N-m of torque over milliseconds of time, you'll be able to understand more about what you're doing and how it relates to our greater goal of what I call 'Living Fast' -- realizing our true potential in whatever we do.

The most effective fitness training involves science; it is nearly impossible to know if you are overtraining or achieving maximal training benefits without having detailed data on the kind of energy expended over time, as well as the power generated over time. It's like having an engine with gauges-- a speedometer tells you how fast you're going. A tachometer says something about the effort level of the engine, but only a dynamometer can tell us how much torque and horsepower that engine is making, in essence whether we've got a V-8 or a 4-cylinder on our hands.

Torque is a measurement of rotational force- like how much weight can you lift in a single moment in time.
Horsepower is a measurement of force over time- how much weight can you hold up in the air? And for how long? The time piece of this is as important as the force part.

Effective training improves three things:

1. Horsepower (measured in Watts for cycling - speed)
2. Torque (also known as force production- acceleration)
3. Aerobic fitness (measured in heart rate for a given speed - efficiency)

A balance of effort across these three variables is required to deliver your best fitness.

The good news is that there are simple tools that can really help us train smarter, akin to the engine tools noted above. Here they are:

- Any basic bike computer is a speedometer. Simple enough.
- A cadence counter is a simple tachometer- your car can go 30 mph in four or five different gears, so which one is best? It depends on the terrain.
- A heart rate monitor is another form of tachometer, linked directly to your heart. The bad news is that the response of the engine (your heart) typically falls between 30 and 60 seconds behind the level of effort at the wheels.
- A power meter is a dynamometer. Most relate horsepower in units of Watts. Some can also give torque, which relates more to an ability to accelerate or climb a steep hill at a low cadence.

A heart rate monitor combined with a bike computer's speed will tell us quite a bit about efficiency and power over time in the form of average speed. Higher efficiency and higher power equates to a higher average speed at a given heart rate. Higher efficiency may not always yield improved speeds- you can improve your efficiency without improving your speed if you just use long, slow distance training versus training that focuses on both power and efficiency- intervals.

A heart rate monitor combined with a bike computer's cadence on a long, steep hill will tell us lots about torque and power over time in the form of the time required to climb the same hill.

Here's what the tools I just named tell us: Relative changes over time, provided we use identical testing under reasonably identical conditions every time we test-- typically, the things we'd measure would be time to complete something (power), average speed and heart rate over a distance (power), average speed for a given heart rate (not reliable day to day but decent over long periods of time), distance achieved over time (acceleration and sprinting) or top speed in a given distance (sprinting) - using the same course and ensuring we're well rested each time we measure for comparison. Each test requires a different course and procedure.

Note that the key factor here is that we're recording relative changes, not absolute ones- how we did compared to other times versus how we do compared to a standard. This is useful data and it can help us improve our own performance. But it's really only useful to us as individuals over time unless we all do the same tests on the same course at the same time.

We call those races.

Each of these tools use data from instantaneous sources to produce a report over time, whether it's average speed or heart rate, or total time or distance.

In the same way, a heart rate monitor is critical to our performance monitoring, but it really just records instantaneous effort as opposed to overall intensity- put another way, which workout is 'harder'? Which workout gives more 'bang for the buck' of effort? If your car's engine runs wide open for 1 hour versus five hours at half-speed, which session is harder on the engine? That depends on the load it was carrying right? It also depends on what kind of fitness we're focusing on in that particular workout.

Which begins to explain the importance of having a longer-term plan.

If we want to take our fitness to its highest levels, we need absolute measurements, and tools that help us manage our training in terms of effort over time.

I plan to relate more on those tools and the science behind them in the days ahead.

-d2g

Aero hype vs reality...

2008-01-16T14:35:00.000-08:00

I rediscovered this decent summary page while monkeying around-- there are others that are much more detailed but this wraps it all up nicely--

How much do those wheels really matter?

http://www.cervelo.com/content.aspx?m=Engineering&i=Aerodynamics

Max savings of 5-7 minutes for an Ironman for wheels-- a trispoke up front and disc in back vs 32 spokes. Everything else is in between-- and the difference between reduced spoke count and 30+mm deep rims is closer to the fast end. The others, Zipps, etc, are already close to discs, under a minute over an Ironman.

Wheel weight doesn't matter all that much according to a great number of studies. It's all about how much time you spend accelerating vs rolling along. And the reality is that you spend little time truly accelerating hard enough to make a significant difference by wheel weight. I have a friend in SD who does this stuff for a living and he's run the numbers for some ProTour riders, so I'm confident he's right... he holds patents for things that rely on aerodynamics (golf related).

Frame weight matters even less. 480 grams roughly equals one pound. That's a water bottle or a tool in your bag, or those extra bon bons we had at Christmas...

An aero frame saves maybe half what the wheels might save.

SO the most aero wheels and frame over an Ironman MIGHT save you 10 minutes. Under laboratory conditions.

BUT... you will get 30+ minutes saved for body position over an Ironman distance.

You can go to a tunnel for about $500 these days.

New wheels cost upwards of $1K for the 'good ones'...

You wanna go faster or look good?

We're looking for the low-cost, high payoff things since we have limited budgets-- the details matter a lot on the high end, world class (aka I get stuff free) riders, but they shave seconds or less in the real world. That's a slow transition difference to us. Or a potty stop on the run. Or a dropped Gu that has to be picked up.

It's in the noise as the scientists would say...

OBTW-- I can't tell you how many riders I see on 'fast' (aka EXPENSIVE) bikes that have obviously horrible positions, really upright, very uncomfortable, and unquestionably slower than they could be. The extra 30-40 lbs of weight didn't help much either. You guys are obviously NOT in that category.

;-)

d2g

More thoughts on training

2008-01-16T10:36:00.001-08:00

I've decided to move away from emails and into this forum to allow greater ease of sharing and a more historical view of the information I try and pass along.

Here's where we are...

2008 events sign-ups are coming fast...

Horribly Hilly Hundreds - Saturday, 14 June -- sells out in a few hours -- sign up on Saturday 19 January at 9 AM CST-- don't miss it!! www.horriblyhilly.com

Joe Friel's Blog is a phenomenal asset that I regularly review. Right now there are several must-read articles on training, bike fit, weight lifting, and a host of great information... read it here.

My three favorite cycling sites:

Pez (The link here is to a must-read article, go to the parent site for lots of great stuff)
Velonews
CyclingNews

More to follow when I get time.

Ride On!

-d2g

Speed is a relative thing

2006-08-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

Latest pic of FREEDOM...

2006-06-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest picture of FREEDOM-- the bow is joined to the rest of the hull now-- we have a full-length ship!

Closing out the ride with a downhill...

2006-06-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

Mitch Potter, a friend from Washington Canoe Club and a roboticist at Naval Research Labs, made a fateful choice to accompany me on a last-ditch mountain-biking adventure to Elizabeth Furnace in the Shenandoah Mts of Virginia. Little did he know that d2g adventures rarely fail to disappoint...

You see, Mitch had only been mountain biking a few weeks, and although he's what I'd call a legitimate world-class paddler, and a hell of a cyclist and athlete in general, he'd not quite settled into the whole new world on two wheels in the dirt. So I figured I'd give him a proper baptism...

After taking longer than we both expected to find the trailheads (hey, 2 GPS's only help if the maps have grids...), we set off on a mamoth climb to the top of a mountain. On the way up, Mitch looks over at a trail coming out of what appeared to be an impossibly steep downhill and says, "Hey do you think that's where we come out?"

Not wanting to scare him quite so early, I replied, "Naahh, that's probably a different trail..." and we kept on pedaling up and up and up...

About an hour later we were still climbing, when we stop for a bite to eat and a little chill time.

We set back out on our bikes and voila, here's this cool inviting reservoir... complete with a blow-up pool inner tube in case you're ready for a swim. Since it was about 90, I was ready, but we pressed on toward more adventure, but not until I waded in to get pics of the fishies...

We get to the top, there's a radio tower and an amazing view. We consult the maps and decide to ride the ridge line to the next peak... hey there's a trail right here...

ROCK PILE!!

Since we'd done this craaazy long climb, then hiked with our bikes on our backs for at least 3 miles, adding up to about 12 miles of travel, we figured we at least deserved a nice downhill run back to the truck... and we got a good one, although there were still rocky sections that required some hiking. OK, so there were a lot of sections that required a lot of hiking.

Does this hiking thing ever end?

I thought we were here to ride our bikes?

Who's idea was this anyway?

I gotta pee...

What the hell are we doing up here?

This sucks!

Hey, I can ride this section...

Ten feet later...

OK, just another short hike...

Damn, these rocks are big...

Wow, hey nice view...

Did you see that snake? Think it was a rattler? Cool!

OK, maybe we can ride some more now...

Mitch on the switch(backs)...
Here's Mitch finishing up his maiden adventure with d2g... the rest of the ride was a long fire road downhill... no one ever said it would be easy... but we had a great time and I know that if anyone could enjoy the pain it would be Mitch!!

Looking forward to the next one amigo!!!

-d2g

An amazing surprise

2006-06-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

I was changing a tire when we noticed this fawn hiding about 5 feet away... we could have touched it easily! But we didn't... we weren't sure if it was hurt or just thought it was hiding...
And a few minutes later it just got up and wandered away... can you find it now?

Backpacks with wheels?

2006-06-20T05:34:00.000-07:00

Are you sure this is the trail?

d2g Bustin

2006-06-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here's d2g bustin' his hump on yet another rockpile...

Yeah, I know the trail gets easier... right up here... I can see it... it's about a block away...

Mitch on the Rocks...

2006-06-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

Here's Mitch contemplating a SERIOUS climb over a little boulder...

Elizabeth Furnace May 06

2006-06-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Furnace May 2006

2006-06-20T05:27:00.000-07:00

Pushing the Envelope on the Water

2006-04-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

I was in San Diego for work last week and spent some time aboard a new boat that the DoD Office of Force Transformation just bought-- it's called Stiletto and will be used to test new ideas for command and control of high-speed craft in combat... it's about 90 feet long.

Oh, did I mention that it's fast?

Mships is the company that built it in San Diego. They have more photos there.

I haven't been underway on the boat but maybe will get the chance sometime soon. It's built almost completely out of carbon fiber composites; if I understand it right, part of the purpose of the experiment is to evaluate alternative ship construction methods and materials. My concern for carbon fiber hullforms is their vulnerability to crushing and piercing damage alongside piers or other objects...

Stiletto has about 7,000 HP delivered through four diesels into 4 surface-piercing skewed propellors. They were apparently chosen over waterjets for high-speed performance characteristics. I think I would prefer jets for their low-speed handling advantages, but I'll talk more about that if/when I can finagle a ride...

Initial thoughts: A great science project. It looks cool but in terms of military utility, my biggest question lies in how to get it somewhere far away-- it's not clear that it could ride inside an Amphibious ship on its hard chines, although it is slightly narrower than an LCAC... getting it into and out of a well deck would be tough since it doesn't have the natural cushions that an air cushion provides. It looks stealthy but I'm told it's not. The boat is pretty much empty inside at the moment-- I'm interested to see what systems are installed and tested. Some of them will obviously be classified.

We need to do more of these kinds of experiments-- if we're the most powerful Navy in the World, why shouldn't we be experimenting with new ideas that could help maintain our edge? I wonder why we didn't buy 3-4 of these so we could really test the Wolf PAC idea.

Welcome to Living Fast!

2006-04-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have a simple philosophy for life- make the most of every day! If you share that idea, then we've got lots to talk about-- I like things that go fast or push the envelope in other interesting ways, and plan to share my encounters and experience with them here--

I hope that you find this interesting. Thanks for sniffing around...

d2g

PS-- that's me in my dad's new ride... you can guess where I got my fascination with all things fast.