StewStuph

Recently, I joined a group on Facebook to facilitate group gravel rides at Umstead Park . I've been there a few times before and have more bad luck than good. The first time I rode there I had a very bad cramp. Probably because I tried to do too much too early into my reintroduction to cycling. Another time, I was stung by a yellow jacket. However, with this new group, I was ready to give it another try. So I set up a ride this past Saturday. This time was, once again, a disaster. The ride started normally and we ended up having a total of seven riders. My previous rides at Umstead had excluded one trail due to it being closed. This time though, I suggested we take the trail since I had never ridden it before. I got off the preferred line, and into some looser gravel, and crashed. Not a bad crash, but I did end up on the ground. Later, as we are descending on another trail, I hit a rock and my rear tire went flat. After changing repairing the flat the ride continued. I ...

If you have been following this blog you will know that I have started cycling regularly again. In my past, I tried racing. I never did exceptionally well, but I did enjoy it. Now that I am back on a bike and getting fitter, I decided to give a race a try. I saw a notification for Buddhapalooza  and did some research. It looked like the perfect event for me to try racing again. It is set up as a fundraiser, 10 miles long (7 miles on road and 3 miles single track.) It looked like a fun, low-pressure event not so focused on winning and more on having fun. So I registered for the event and showed up to a course I have never ridden. Billed mainly as a mountain bike race, there were several other people on cross bikes like me. It was a Le Mans start, set your bike down in a given area, all the racers are fifty yards away on foot. When the race starts, you have to run to your bike and then start riding. I placed my bike close to the run start line. I think this was a mistake. By the ...

Don't let the title of this post fool you. Yes, I went riding on a new route and I had to get new tires. However, I had to get tires for my wife's van, not my bike. This past weekend we took a quick road trip to Michigan so that my wife, and my step-children, could attend a memorial service for her my wife's ex's grandmother, step-children's great grandmother. Making the twelve-plus hour drive is always easier when you can divide the driving between two people. When asked if I would go with her for what was essentially a one day visit, I agreed even though I would be missing a soccer game, which is difficult for me to accept as a goalkeeper. Then my wife had the great idea that I take my new bike and spend some time riding while she and the kids attended the memorial service. Her suggestion was for me to ride the Lansing River Trail . While I love riding on greenways around home and I am sure this trail would be enjoyable, I was hoping to take my bike on a mor...

I have heard about Brumley and was even told once that I would enjoy riding there with my cross bike . So this morning I drove 45 minutes to explore the trails. The ride started well and I was really enjoying my time on the bike. Shortly after this photo was taken, I encountered a technical, to my novice off-road experience, rocky section. On that rocky downhill section, I attempted to go down with one foot still clipped in and my other foot on the ground. Unfortunately, It was steeper than I thought I ended up going down on the rocks. I tried to break my fall with my hands, which I partially did. However, my left shoulder took the brunt of the impact. Upon picking up my bike I realized my rear wheel was not spinning. Upon first inspection, I thought my brake pads were rubbing on my tires. So I did what seemed sensible. I put the bike on my shoulder, it's a cross bike after all, I started walking down the trail. A fellow cyclist stopped to check on my condition and noticed that...

My new-to-me cyclocross bike I have always enjoyed cycling, but when I was in high school, in the early 1990s, a friend of mine started cycling in a serious manner. I had been friends with him since we were in the third or fourth grade when we played on the same soccer team. I saw what he was doing and it looked like a lot of fun, so I followed along and bought my first road bike from him, a Schwinn Prelude, very similar to this one minus the aero bars. Up until that point I had had a bike of some sort growing up and would ride all over the place. Now I was moving into another chapter of cycling in which I would wear lycra shorts, clip in to Look pedals and ride the narrowest tires I had ever seen. I immediately fell in love with this new type of bike riding. I began riding with him and the local racing club, though I had a hard time keeping up at first, I eventually was able to keep pace with the group. My next bike would be a Trek 1400. It still had downtube shifters, ...