I came, I saw, I road, I fell...I fell again

Wow a day today was. Woke up early had a horrible softball game then came back in to get a nice training ride in before we ship our bikes out later in the week. Today was going to be my first ride with clipless pedals and cleats. I had been practicing on the trainer throughout the week since I got my clipless pedal system. I was ready to bring it out on the road. Turns out the rainy day was not the day to start using the new system. I was a little anxious at first getting out on the road but I was able to clip in and out fairly easily. We had ridden about 1.5 miles until we came across some diagonal train tracks (a biker's worst nightmare). If you know Hoboken you know Madison St. is not the best place to ride as its filled with potholes and lots of other junk in the road. Basically I got to the train tracks and didn't ride straight over them but instead to the side. Mistake...head over heels I was in the air and all I got was a cut thumb. My bike went flying and my cleats disengaged like they should. It was pretty amuzing. Too bad Mike didn't take a picture of it. We decided to ride a little more afterwards and then to come back over the train tracks as it was a psychological thing to overcome. I even disengaged my pedals before I went over the tracks this time. It was to no avail as I was on the ground again. No serious injuries to report but I got a little road rash...the initiation to the bikers club.

A cut thumb, road rash, and a little hurt pride and some bent handle bars was all I have to report. That was my first fall in almost a year since I began riding. Let's hope California doesn't have any perpendicular train tracks or else I don't know what I'm going to do. Time to get back on the trainer and make sure everything is alright.

Update 5/19/08...still alive and since I looked like a cow yesterday flying through the air I'm thinking about getting this jersey. I will definitely fit the part with this jersey.

Training Ride at the SBP

First, congrats everybody on the half marathon! Everyone's times look awesome!

This morning I went on another (I think my fourth) ride on the Schenectady Bike Path (SBP), which, as usual was awesome. The segment I ride is 14 miles, which I now believe to be true because I had my new bike computer hooked up and working (installed it myself as usual). I've decided that the Cateye Velo 8 was the easiest and cleanest install i've done to date on a bike.

The path was not crowded but there were more people than the last few times that I was there, which was nice to see. Similar to the Jeep Wave, I enjoy briefly greeting all of the people coming at me and yelling "On your left!" to the people I'm passing.

I was pretty pleased with my cadence and seemed to be riding around 15mph for most of the time, because with stops my speed was around 10mph. My top speed was 23mph which is pretty good considering there are no big hills. The bike handles beautifully at high speed.

I love that on this bike I'm able to use the drops because they are more upright than my 1500 was. Today, I was in the drops and pedaling hard and not looking up in front of me and almost didn't realize there was a huge deep ditch coming up, and the path curved around it. Luckily, (very much so!) I looked up and saw it just in time to hit the breaks and skid to a stop, avoiding the fall (which would have hurt ALOT).

Half-Marathon

Finally ran that half-marathon today that I have been constantly talking about in Long Branch, New Jersey. I'm still waiting for my official results to come out but by my estimations I clocked in at 1:54;31 we will see how accurate that is. For my first half I was pumped that I was able to go that hard and I know that I can go harder my next one. The weather was cool and a little bit of dampness in the air but it was perfect running weather and not too hot. I can't wait for the next one to run in.

Now that the half marathon is over its going to be a lot of biking from here until our trip. I'm actually thinking of doing a triathalon now, I'm going to test the limits of my body. My bike is in the shop until Thursday night being tuned-up for the trip. Once I get my bike back I'm planning on doing a lot of riding. Mike and I are already planning on long rides (25-30 milers) for next weekend. Hopefully we will be in shape and ready to rock and roll in three weeks!!

Long Branch Half Marathon Pictures
Official Team 11 Cooper Ave Race Results:

Air Caddy It Up

I apologize to all my loyal blog followers that I haven't been posting regularly, but I have been busy training for the half-marathon which is now only 17 days away!! Today I bought the Air Caddy to use for transporting my bike across the country for our trip. Apparently the company is changing specs on the Caddy due to the shipping companies concerns over the high price of fuel so the companies wanted smaller boxes. Anyway the Caddy should be here by mid-May. Also as Mike previously posted we went on our first training ride two weekends ago. It takes awhile for your ass to heal after being in the saddle for 28 miles and the first ride of the season. It was a good ride until we saw the steep hill signs and knew we would have to climb back all the fun hills we went down. Hopefully after the half is over I hope to ride 3-4 times per week (work permitting). Also, big thanks to everyone that has supported Mike and my efforts to raise money to find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. If you haven't donated and want to there is still time left. The links to our rider pages are provided in Mike's post below. Thanks again for all your help.

TREK 520 Info

Below is a link for the spects on my new wheels.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/road/520/520/

NEW BIKE! (Duh)

If you don't already know, the Trek 1500 is no more. I've sold it as last week I've moved on to bigger, better, slower and heavier things.

Last week after going on a ride through the Schenectady Bike Path along the beautiful Mohawk River in Upstate NY, I decided to go to a local bike shop (LBS) that I had heard about. I walked into the shop and was immediately impressed by their huge selection, the warehouse style shop was several thousand square feet filled with different types of bicyles and more so they were the brands that I love, Trek, Cannondale, Giant, etc.

After a few minutes of walking around I asked an employee if they had any touring bikes for example the Trek 520, (which I had been lusting after for months). He informed me they did have one that they got in last week. And he showed it to me. As I had done my research and knew that I was likely to best fit the 21inch frame as that is a 53.3 cm frame. To my delight they had that frame in stock. I immediately took it for a test ride.

Upon my return from the test ride, It was of course obvious that I had to have the bike. I attempted to trade in my bike for the new one, but the shop was only able to offer me $100 so I kept it (and eventually sold it the following day on Craigslist). Even so, I haggled a bit with the store employee and reached a price that was acceptable to me and bought the bike.

Since the purchase I have taken the bike out on the streets of Albany, and am loving the 700c X 32 tires as they are much thicker than the ones on the 1500. The bike is heavy steel and doesn't flex or give when I hit a pothole. The riding position is more upright and I can even comfortably use the drop handlebars. All in all it is amazing. More observations to come.

First training ride of the sesaon

Earlier today Mitch and I went out for our first training ride this Spring. We rode from Fort Lee, NJ, near the George Washington Bridge, up to Piermont, NY and back. We rode a total of 28 miles through mostly rolling hills and some steep ones once we entered Rockland County. We were going to ride all the way to the Tappan Zee Bridge but once we started seeing those "trucks use low gear" signs we saw all over Vermont we figured since it was our first time out we shouldn't kill ourselves and turned around.

JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes September 13 Whitefish, MT

Mitch and I signed up for the JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes in Whitefish, Montana in September. We plan on riding 105 miles near Glacier National Park. I know you're probably thinking "Montana? Why Montana?" Valid question, but when else would we ever have an opportunity or the desire to go to Montana? By the time we complete our California Bike Trip we should hopefully be in good enough shape to be physically capable of riding 105 miles in one day (without all the gear we'll be carrying in California.) The JDRF Ride to Cure is a weekend long event focused on raising money to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. Mitch and I have committed to raise a total of $8000 between the two of us. My family and I have participated and fund raised for JDRF walkathons for many years. Last year when I first heard about the JDRF Ride to Cure I immediately knew it was something I wanted to do no matter how intimidating the actual ride sounds or how difficult it might be to raise all of the necessary money to participate. I'm looking forward to a great weekend in September. In order to maximize the impact of everyone's donation I'm looking to pool together as many donations as possible since my employer will match my donations. If you are interested in donating please consider sending me a check so I can submit a matching donation to JDRF. Otherwise below are the links to mine and Mitch's rider donation pages.

Mike's Biker Donation Page
Mitch's Biker Donation Page

Other Necessities

and don't forget the purchase of a digital camera to record many outakes we will undoubtedly have on this trip.

We've got business cards

Last year on our Vermont Bike Trip we realized business cards were a necessity. A lot of the people we met along the way seemed to be very interested in our trip and asked for the blog address. We figured we'd make things easy by creating custom business cards to pass out to our fans we meet along the route in California. Plus these will be quite the collector's item someday. Next on the list of improvements for this year's trip...custom bike jerseys and bike hats.