damascus, VA - thursday great ride

[self portrait - crazy colors]

I had a great ride thursday with friends: YT, Sigsbey, Simpy, and Thatcher. We headed up to Damascus to ride the creeper trail and iron mt trail. it turned into roughly 32 miles and 4.5 hours. lots of fun. a few photos:

Damascus:


YT looking good - his fork, not so much:


Broken spoke bad, Mtn Dew Throwback good:


Pacelining back to the car:


The Paceline didn't last long - Simpy towing me along:

super rad photo - thanks kristian jackson. china creek trail.

so we rode bikes thursday and it was raining. kristian decided it would be a good day for photos. he was right:



selfishly, i uploaded this to the facebook and it might be the most popular photo i've ever put up. currently its got 45 likes and 20+ comments. as many FB people mentioned, Kristian Jackson is a super skilled photog. Thanks again KJ.

Long, Slow, Lap around Linville Gorge...

So I'd hoped to go mountain biking with friends on my day off this week, but with unsure weather and people's busy lives I ended up riding alone. "I guess I'll just ride alone."

Studying various weather websites I realized I should head southeast - so I decided to ride the Linville Gorge Loop listed in one of the books we sell at work. Problem is, I'm still running 36/46 x 11/26 gearing from CX racing. Oh well, a 34/50 x 11/28 would have made more sense...

An eerie old, moldy sign greeted me as I rolled out:



My route for the day:





It took a little over 4 hours of riding to cover the 52 miles, and nearly 5 hours start to finish including 10+ stops to check the map. I left my handwritten cue sheet at the car. Oops. It was a fun day, and I'd like to go back and try riding up Tablerock Mtn Rd sometime instead of 'Simpson Creek Rd' or whatever it turns into. As usual, thanks for reading. JG

january 22nd CX ride

so today darcy and i went out to old cove creek school and rode our CX bikes for a couple hours. our route:

old 421, left onto north fork rd, left onto beaver dam rd, left onto georges gap rd, left to old cove creek school.

darcy got loaded up, i swapped out bottles and began my ride home. i headed over mast gap rd, 194n, bairds creek rd, dewitt barnett rd, moore mtn rd, willow mtn rd, laurel fork rd, greer ln, then long st back to our house.

we were really excited to check out north fork rd since neither of us had ridden it before and i was glad to find/connect moore mtn rd to willow mtn rd - we stayed in a cabin off willow mtn rd w/ friends before our wedding. it was neat to stop there and see it again 3.5 years later.

okay, okay, some photos:

cyclocross time?

so summer ended. i did the fontana SERC race then quit bike riding for a while. after being lazy for a while i built my Specialized CRUX - it's pink - and got back on the bike. i've done a couple stackhouse races but got down to asheville CX in black mountain, NC 10/9/11 and i raced myhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif cyclocross bike sunday - boy that was fun.




after replacing my broken pedal (10mins before the start), starting in the last row (of 70 people), and dealing with my seat sliding down 3cm i was quite happy with 28th out of 66 people. it was a great race and made me feel good about how things are coming together.

i went out early this a.m. for a bike ride. and this helped me get out in the 50deg rain:



so i did some intervals (blah) and checked out the trees and rain and had these thoughts about it:

fall trees colors bright
cross, tabata intervals
leaves don't notice me




MSG cyclocross has races saturday and sunday coming up - we'll see how it goes. AND darcy and i are working on a creeper trail trip this weekend. it will be awesome! thanks for reading. jg

may, june, july. slack

so since i actually wrote a real blog post in may, i:

missed the SERC race in ducktown in favor of a 5hr pisgah ride instead
spectated the burn24 in wilkes (and announced my return in 2012)
kind of got it together for massanuttan HOO-HA! not pro

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

had a few weeks of inactivity/lack of motivation/rain/etc
rode some prototype tires

From summer 2011

got some landscaping done - thanks matt H & darcy

From summer 2011

got it together for the AMBC magic cycles race at beech mtn

From summer 2011

cheered for darcy - she won. everything she's done this year... teacher of the year, valdese Tri, westside Y tri, sevierville Tri, you get the idea

From summer 2011

then it rained and got muddy and i was slow

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

and had our 3yr anniversary =)
so we kayaked on the new river. thanks Rivergirl

From summer 2011

From summer 2011

then july 4th weekend we camped with friends (and dogs)

From summer 2011

didn't ride bikes. then started again. this week i
did a 4hrs ride previewing ~35mi of the iron MTN 100k course
and a tuesday night ride, no not reid's route
along with an easy rocky knob mtb ride. haiku here:

morning rocky knob
laps. super sweet flow and rocks
together as one.

that brings me to tonight. darcy is away with her girl friends at the beach, and i'm 'watching/listening' to le Tour. looking forward to sunday 'racing' the iron Mtn 100k but more importantly excited about taking darcy to crested butte in one week - hopefully riding the 401 trail:



thanks for reading. jg

rainy day deck hill

repeats on deck hill
mountain bike with single ring
cut short by cold rain