Big Bikes

Looking Forward - Going Sumo
(and Chelada Challenge News)

It's that time of year again...what kind of lame way is that to start a blog post, "it's that time of year again?" Let's try that again.

This time of year SUCKS. At least for riders in the northeast. Suddenly the weather is behaving in a brutally seasonally correct manner (I skipped my ride out to school last night because it was 14-f-in'-°). I told myself that skipping last night's ride and racking up a whopping weekly total of maybe two hours on the bike is OK because in January I'll be riding 10 hours a week minimum. That is if, I say if, I ride to school every day. Then of course I'll have the 40 minute (woo!) round-trip to work on Saturdays and whatever I decide to do on Sunday. That'll get me out of Sumo territory in no time right?

I do have a Jan Ullrich like habit of ballooning my weight in the off-season. It used to be a matter of 15 or 20 pounds. Now I try to keep it under five. This year I have failed. I shot up to 170 by the end of November, even before Thanksgiving. That is not good. I am now hovering the 167-168 range, still almost ten pounds over ideal race weight. God, I am gonna look like crap in my thong speedo down in Costa Rica on the honeymoon next week.

Looking forward. It is officially break time, actually I'm well into my break, I'm even staring at the ice cold light at the end of the tunnel. It is closer to the beginning than the end for me. The beginning of "training," the beginning of long, cold winter rides, where I hop from Dunkin Donuts to Dunkin Donuts (yeah kid!) motivated only by the prospect over another half cocoa/half coffee around the frost-heave mangled bend.

Right now I can't imagine getting out there and riding for three or four hours, but I can't imagine riding the trainer either. I am the worst trainer rider ever. Not quite as bad as my wife, who once crashed her trainer. This is not a joke, I may have mentioned it before. Her rear quick release was not appropriate for trainer use. Sometime during her session she reached for a bottle and woke up on the floor lying next to an over-turned stool. It's a good thing Clint Eastwood wasn't directing the film "Million Dollar Trainer-Baby," or she might have woken up paralyzed.

My trainer ineptitude stems more from my inability to stay on the thing steadily for more than five or ten minutes. I find a myriad excuses to get off and do other more appealing activities — activities like doing dishes, cleaning the toilet, and writing my wife haikus with the word poop in them (it makes up for the fact that I occasionally make light of her trainer wreck).

This is the time of year when I plan, I fill legal pads with unintelligible (even to me) notes about schemes, training ideas, potential race schedules, and doodles of angry monkeys. It's very constructive.


Wait, this is important!

No matter how much I scheme and doodle, I still can't come up with a way to make the Chelada Challenge work, I'm open to ideas. The most horrible thing I can imagine is drinking a six pack of Chelada on the trainer while watching a movie from Rotten Tomatoes Top Ten Worst Movies Ever. While periodically video taping my commentary as I becomes less coherent and more nauseous. For the right price (donate button upper-right there) perhaps it could turn into an endurance event.

Wait this could work...I have weekdays off now. I could do a live video feed (Rooter would have to help me figure that out) for those of you working, as I watch movies for eight hours (we'd have to come up with a combination of movies that totaled that amount) and drink Chelada. There might be a secondary fueling element as well. Like BK Steakhouse Burgers or something...I dunno, what goes "well" with beer and clam juice drinks?

I'd set my computer up so we'd know how far or long I'd actually been riding, then maybe I'd accept donations on a per hour basis. For every whatever...$50 I ride an hour and drink X number of Cheladas.

Remember, all donations go toward the near-impossibility of me going to Single Speed Worlds 2010 in New-freakin'- Zealand.

Yes, Fatty raised over $125,000 in a week for cancer research. I'm sort of doing the same thing. Only I'm performing an inane and potentially hazardous to my health stunt to to raise a few thousand bucks, so that I can go to New Zealand...and perform further inane and potentially hazardous to my health stunts.