50's and Lovin' It!

So it's been a long 6 weeks since I last wrote about riding.  As my previous post says the snow kind of kept me indoors and off the road.  There were a few times that I was able to get out but just as soon as I started we got another batch of crappy weather.  Not that I mind winter weather, but I'm not real fond of riding on ice, roads narrowed by temporary banks of snow, and loose salt.
Over the 6 weeks I rode a total of 7 times!  Not a whole lot when considering I almost rode that much in a normal week.  Oh well, I guess I could have not gotten out at all and been back to square one with a sore posterior and weak legs after my first ride out.  Of course I don't really remember any of the rides except for one that I took into New Bloomfield, and the past three.
About a week after the back to back snow storms the roads were clear enough for me to get back out and I decided to ride into New Bloomfield.  I wanted to take a spin around town and remember my childhood.  It was a lot of fun and it was cool to hang out in the old stompin' grounds where my memories came rushing back - hanging out at the dam behind the cemetery with a clear view of the prison, playing at the play ground by the post office, and going through those awkward stages of teenhood in middle school.  It really made me long for my childhood again.  You never realize how great things are as a child until you're looking back.  My parents picked the perfect town and county to raise their kids in and I thank them for it.

The other three weren't as exciting.  The one ride came on my birthday.  I was actually really looking forward to it, even though I decided to do it about 2 hours before I did it.  My friends and girlfriend - Juan, Jenny, and Rebecca - were throwing me a birthday dinner after they got off work (they had an in-service day and I was off haha it was fantastic), so I decided - after spending the morning snowboarding - that I would ride down for dinner since Bec and I didn't both need to have two cars to drive home.  I figured it was a great opportunity to ride over 20 miles and have a mountain to climb.  However, about 7 miles in I went to take my knit cap off and was shocked to find I never put my helmet on!  With the feeling of my knit cap I never noticed that I hadn't put my helmet on and just took off with out thinking twice.  I was far enough away from home that I didn't want to turn around for it so I decided to keep going, but I will say it was the most cautious ride I've ever ridden.  I constantly looked in my mirror for vehicles passing too close and looked farther ahead for any kind of obstacles to avoid.  Needless to say I arrived at Juan's house safe and unscathed and enjoyed my dinner very much.
The other two aren't really worth mentioning since they were just rides to get in miles.  However, there is one very interesting and exciting side note.... it was in the 60's for both rides!  I have been waiting for warmer weather for a very long two cold months.  The cold was really demoralizing and I was finding it hard to want to go out and ride, but now that the weather is getting warmer it's changed my whole outlook.  The best part is that the long-term weather forecast isn't showing a high below 50 degrees.  There's plenty of rain on the way, but I'm ok with that so long as the temperatures don't drop down below 40 again.
Well that's the short rough draft of an update from me.  Hopefully with warmer sunnier days on the way more miles will be logged, which means more posts.  Until then, feel free to fill your time with TV watching, internet surfing, and soda chugging contests - for the real go getter do all of them at once!

In the past 6 weeks 106 miles - 2655 miles to go.

Winter Break

Have you ever shoved your face into cake and as you're face down up to your ears in cake you realize "crap! I can't breath!"  Well, switch the cake for for snow, your face for legs, and instead of having cake and icing up to your ears it's snow up to your knees and your thought is "crap! I can't move!"  That's what happened about 10 days ago.  We received 17 inches of snow on February 5th-6th!  I love the snow and any time we get any I throw my snowpants and boots on and out the door I go.  Having gotten a total of 3 inches last year I was THRILLED to get 17, but that also meant... no riding.  I'm not going to complain and say I don't want the snow, but it did cut into my riding schedule.  Four days later the roads were fairly clear and there was a small berm on the side of the road to safely ride.  Then winter's friendly face showed again.  On the 10th we got another bout of snow, 10 more inches, rendering the roads unsafe again!  I took it all in stride and decided to just take a break from riding and trade in my cycling shoes for snow boots. 


Winter Break from Jesse McDonald on Vimeo.

 

You can tell by my face that I was reaching uncharted speeds 

So for the past 10 days I've been spending my time off from riding and work, sledding down the hill in the backyard with Bec, building a ramp, and building a rail to ride my snowboard on.  It has been a blast and there's still about a foot of snow left which means there is plenty more snow fun to be had.

Time spent riding - 0
Time spent in the snow - 10 days

World Famous

So I'm not sure how it happened, but one of the creators of the DOUGHMAN competition found my blog entry about "training" for it and left me a nice comment. He also corrected my statement about who started it. Duke University had no part in the creation of the competition. It was the sole invention of 4 creative minded friends.
I would like to thank Jeff the DOUGHMAN - we're on a first name basis - for giving me recognition on the DOUGHMAN facebook group. I was super excited just to get to participate in the event, let alone be featured on the group site, so thank you very much.
Only 4 more months until the DOUGHMAN... can't wait!

Same Ol' Same Ol'

WOO HOOO!

The past two weeks, although not very productive, left me with some fun, memorable rides. Over the weekend the temperature got down into the teens and, as you can see, affected my face during the ride. The first time it happened it was just little beads of ice stuck in my beard. The second time I had near stalactites forming off my chin. I laughed pretty hard when I first saw them and thought it was pretty cool, but all that stopped when I pulled them off and half my chin came with them. Every time I stretched my mouth I could feel the ice breaking and pulling the hair, it was really weird. I couldn't believe that just from breathing ice actually formed on my beard. On top of that, my water formed about an 1/8 inch layer of ice in my bottle and froze the spout completely shut. I mean I couldn't even open it, not even with my teeth - it was nuts!


The one day I was really rushed to get my ride in so I decided to do a 10 mile ride. The whole time my legs were burning and all I could think of was getting back so that I wouldn't be late to pick Bec up from work and make it to my hair appointment on time. After I got back I was going through my bike computer and noticed that my average speed was 17.3mph. Now for anyone who doesn't ride that doesn't really mean anything, but for me it was crazy. My average is usually around 15 - 15.5mph, so to bump it up 2mph was quite a jump I thought. But when I think about how professionals average 20-25mph over 100 miles it kind of puts things in perspective.

After I started this whole biking idea I decided in order to keep it from getting boring I would need to come up with different types of rides and exotic places (in a 200 mile radius) to go to keep my interest and not have it feel like work. One of the rides I wanted to do was ride in the rain. Luckily for me, I live in PA where winter means it will snow one day and then 2 days later rain so much it'll cause wide spread flooding - and that's exactly what happened. Riding in the rain wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I thought with being all wet I would get really cold, but I never did. The only time I got a little cold was when I would stand up to climb a hill and I had to sit back down on my wet padded shorts. That chill runs right up your crack and into your spine! I learned to only stand up when I had to.

Rain Ride from Jesse McDonald on Vimeo.

After I took off my other sock water came streaming out when I twisted it. That was what I really wanted to show, but unfortunately I chose the disappointing side that had nearly no water. Now I just look like a fool and a sissy for saying I was so wet. I totally would have looked tougher if I had wrung out the other sock.

Well I'm officially one month in and I have yet to be run off the road by a car, fall over from being stuck in my pedals, or blow a tire in the middle of a ride. I look forward to one, or more likely all, of those events happening and getting to post from a hospital. Until then I'll just keep posting the normal boring way... at home.

109 miles in 2 weeks... 2761 to go