A special thanks to Freddy Manzi

Freddy Manzi, owner of Manzi's Barbershop in on Main Street in Webster, MA is a man I've known literally my entire life. I have had the uncanny ability to grow hair from a very young age, and ever since then I've been stopping in to Manzi's every month for a trim. He's been a friend of the family's for longer than that, having grown up around my mom's family in Webster. I'm proud to say he was the first person to donate this year was well as being kind enough to disply my flier in his shop and do a little 'selling' for me.

Aside from being a stand up guy with a heart of gold, he's also a fantastic barber, so if you're in need of a trim, I highly recommend his services.

Training is sometimes difficult...

Weird, right?

Today was one of those days I didn't really feel that much like riding. The temperature was in the high 50's. It was misty, overcast and rain was around, but the forecast showed a window for a few hours. I decided to go out and do a 27 mile loop that I really like. It has a couple good climbs, some great downhill, a long uphill shallow grade section and a rotary (which is fun on a bike for some reason).

I wore a long sleeve polypro under my jersey and my fleece lined knee warmers. The knee warmers were extremely helpful for keeping the muscles and tendons around my knees warm and... well, not really flexible, since they never are but... less like spring loaded steel cable that normal I guess.

I made pretty good time on the ride, as I did yesterday. I'm in my fourth/fifth-ish week of steady riding and I can see the gains already. I'm not looking forward to the first plateau. I might take it easy for the rest of the week and only do a short ride this weekend (another 30 miler) to let my legs recover for the onslaught that is to come in June and July. It would be good to take a few days to really stretch thoroughly and loosen up the leg muscles and tissue with the foam roler, as well as doing a little core strength work (in the form of cleaning up some big tree limbs I took down Monday).

I put up some 8.5 x 11 fliers at Park 'n' Shop and Jimmy's Pizza with tear off tabs with this website on it. The flier explained I was a Dudley local and a little about the PMC. I hope to get some donations from that effort. I'll have another one to go in Manzi's barber shop in Webster. With the fundraising minimum raised to $4,200, I've got to get going early and strong.

Like I have with the training. Here's a picture of me after returning. Yes, the smile was forced and I know it's easy to tell. What I was wearing in the picture kept me comfortable today, although in some spots I was a bit warm and did get sweaty, but that's kinda the norm for me.

New wheels... same attitude

Quick post tonight... I decided to change out my old Spinergy Rev-X super stiff's for a conventional pair of aluminum spoked wheels. After these carbon wheels get old and see a lot of use, the fatigue begins to get to the carbon, and areas of high stress start trying to crack. Unfortunately, Spinergy built these wheels with rivets where the spokes connect to the rim, and consequently created huge stress risers at those points. Rather than take the chance of suffering a catastrophic failure while I'm cruising down a steep hill around 50 mph, I switched to a pair of Easton E70's.


Certainly not the head turners that the Spinergy's were, but of course the durability makes up for it. Plus these are actually a bit lighter and should climb and accelerate better.

Also put on my new chain and cleaned the drivetrain. One less thing to worry about. My list of other chores grows longer still, but hopefully I'll get to some of that this weekend. As well as my long ride, which is 50 miles according to my 1 week advanced schedule.

Over half way through May?

How did this happen? So much to do, so little time.

I managed to put in a pretty solid effort last week. Weekly total was 120 miles. My long ride was 40 miles on Saturday. Yearly totals are as follows: 325.30 miles; 20,927 ft of elevation gain.

I'm trying to stay below an increase of 20% per week as distance goes. I'm technically a week ahead of schedule on the long ride program posted below. At the recommendation of my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend, I'll probably take a week on the easy side, maybe the first week in June if I still have no knee pain then, and then be back on correcting timing for the long ride schedule.

This week I'll stay under 140-ish miles. I have a 50 mile ride next weekend, so I'll probably do a 30 mile ride after work tomorrow and ride into work twice.

I'm coming to think that general schedule, about 90 miles during the work week plus whatever the long ride calls for on the weekend, is about right in terms of training as well as leaving time during the week for my other endeavors (gardening, yard work, housework and fund raising of course).

Speaking of which, now that I've got this website all straightened around and working, expect to see some email from me shortly. Not long after that I'll be sending out the annual letter and fund raising request. As with last year, there will be some tokens of appreciation if you give a certain amount. Those will be announced in the letter.

So far it's looking like a good year in terms of training, weather and my own health (knocks lots of wood). We'll pray it stays that way.

Raining and Training

I managed to get myself caught in a light shower on the way home from work today... on my bike.

Today was one of those days that the challenges of riding regularly started to become frustrating. Not overly so, but... trying to play slalom between thunderstorms is a pain, as is changing a tube on the way in to work, only to find there were no tire levers in my pack.

Ah well, it's all part of the experience, I suppose. Wrinkles like that will be ironed out as I get further into the season.

I've signed myself up for a free account at Bike Journal to log my rides. It also provides the nice automatic service of ranking your mileage among the other 5000+ cyclists using the site. Not unexpectedly, my feeble mileage of 238 miles (year to date) has me in the mid 3000 range. I hope to improve on that. After 3 weeks of light-ish riding, I'm hoping to bump my weekly average up to between 100 and 150 miles a week. Below I've posted the recommended long ride schedule from pmc.org. I'm ahead of schedule at the moment, having already been out for close to a 40 miler. This probably isn't a bad thing, because an increase of 10 miles a week is actually pretty steep, in my humble opinion.

Long Ride Schedule (2 day events)

1. 30 miles May 17th
2. 40 miles May 24th
3. 50 miles May 31st
4. 60 miles June 7th
5. 50 miles, 40 miles (Sat., Sun.) June 14th/15th
6. 70 miles June 21st
7. 80 miles, 50 miles (Sat., Sun.) June 28th/29th
8. 60 miles July 5th
9. 90 miles, 60 miles (Sat., Sun.) July 12th, 13th
10. 80 miles July 19th
11. 50 miles July 26th
12. PMC August 2nd, 3rd

Although, once past the fourth weekend, the increase is a little less with the addition of double day weekends. I'd be interested to know how many people actually follow this guide. I'm guessing not too many. If I manage to do all these recommended rides, the PMC will be cake. Hopefully I can, despite having quite a few other tasks and commitments lined up this summer.

Tomorrow I ride into work again, and hopefully Thursday as well. I'd like to see how my bum knee (skiing injury from this winter) reacts to multiple days of successive riding.

And hopefully before too long my fundraising efforts will be ramped up. Just as soon as I can get all my website issues straightened around with GoDaddy.