Until the Chillness Comes

     Intense training remained my staple for the end of January. I was now having trouble only with my left gastroc. The right no longer gave me any issues, but the left still wanted to tighten on me during longer rides, though it has never hurt this time around. It just feels weak and fatigued and I know pushing it too hard will cause so much muscle spasm that it will then irritate the bone and cause the pain to return. I have worked really hard on the weights for the past month and feel they are helping, but sometimes it's still a fine line between working the muscle and causing it too much stress. The good thing about all this is that I was hoping to add more intensity to my training this winter. Guess I got my wish.

     We ramped up our backyard cyclocross series with several rounds in late January. Not all of our races were planned. Snow came one day and I was called off from work due to all of our patients cancelling, so I threw together a small course here on the farm and had a little snow cross race to have fun while getting in a great workout. Sure beats riding the trainer!

     We got about four inches of snow that day, which shut down most things, but the concert Dina and I had planned to go to was still happening, so we rolled down to Nashville to see Deafheaven, Anthrax and Lamb of God at Marathon Music Works. Dina bought me tickets for Christmas so I had been waiting a while to go to this show. It was a lot of fun. The place was packed! Anthrax is one of the founding heavy metal bands. I was glad to finally see them perform with their original lineup. And they did not disappoint! They looked like they had a lot of fun playing and to me that always makes for the best performances. I'm a huge Lamb of God fan, but I think Anthrax outdid them at this show.

Joey Belladonna of Anthrax

Lamb from way back in the crowd

Frontman for Lamb, Randy Blythe

Randy and all his hair

photo by Lamb of God

     A few days after that small snow, we got a big round of snow. This storm brought more snow to middle Tennessee than we have seen in at least 20 years. I was a small kid the last time I saw over six inches fall and we had 8-10 inches on the ground this time. It pretty much shut down everything around here. I was scheduled to work in Springfield that morning with six other people, but only me and one other therapist made it there. One other tried and got stuck on a hill. The snow was preceded by a lot of freezing rain, so everything was very slick. Once the snow fell on top of the ice, you had great traction for driving. Everybody said the roads were impassable, but I never slid even once in my old Taurus. After hearing everyone complain about their drives for the next several days, I started referring to my car as "Snow Beast" because I had absolutely no difficulty driving. I only went to work that day because I knew at least one patient would show up and they did. Two to be exact. Neither had any real reason to be out in that mess to come to therapy, but at least their troubles were worth their while and they got treated.

Snow covered NorthCrest hospital in Springfield where our clinic is located

You don't see roads like this very often in middle Tennessee

Ice covered everything on the farm

Haven't had snow deep enough to come over my boots in years

Rain gauge

The half-frozen pond had the coolest design on it. There were light strips dividing the ice into segments, each of which had a hole somewhere in it. I've looked at a lot of ponds in winter and never seen this before.

This little guy followed me around as I hiked the farm taking pictures

     Since I was able to move on the roads, I drove over to my parents to hit the trail for some snow mountain biking the first day. Dina and I plowed our way through the deep snow for about an hour before venturing out onto the road. It was 27 degrees with a steady 40 mph wind. We nearly froze out our eyeballs, but had a good time. Dina crashed on a patch of ice at one point and slid down the road like an inner tube. I dove off into the ditch to see how deep a snow drift was and filled my helmet vents full of snow. It was a good time indeed. Shannon was there to snap some pictures as she chose to hike. With the snow so deep, Dina and I did quite a bit of hiking too. The snow was rideable, but like riding one long sandpit. It was an awesome workout!

Started my ride in the snow

Snoop was more than ready to go for a lap

Not how I intended to ride this section, but I kept it upright

Dina navigating the snowy trail

Snow blasted onto the north side of the trees

Dina and Snoop

Passing by one of our trail pumpkins that was peaking out from under the snow

Snow rut

The trail was covered in places by trees bent over from the weight of the snow and ice

The pond along the trail had the same pattern as our pond at home

My helmet vents stuffed with snow

     The snow hung around several days, long enough for us to get ideas. Dina and I were in ride-mode and really wanted to do a backyard cross race. But the snow was too deep to get skinny cross tires through. Heck, some places were too deep for mountain bikes too. We had three-foot drifts in places around the yard. So, I decided to rake some of the snow off to make it shallow enough to ride. I walked off a course on the farm, then started raking a layer of snow off, cutting the snow depth to about 3 inches. I wanted to keep the grass covered. It still needed to be a snow cross, just needed some help becoming rideable. Dina joined me in the labor and we spent an entire day raking and shoveling. Some of the spots were ridiculously deep, but we got it done. Our neighbors must have thought we were nuts, but I'm sure that is not the first time they have thought that about us. We finished just before dark and enjoyed a sweet sunset of red tree tops as the sun reflected off the ice coating the limbs. I had to take a test lap in my jeans and boots and managed to have a spectacular spill over the bars in the one section we did not rake. That was our "snow pit."

Red sunset reflecting off the ice in the trees

     The next day, we played on our creation, then did a one hour race on it. It was a lot of fun, and again a very hard workout. The sun started to melt the snow during the race and it actually started to get down to grass and mud in a few places by the end. Shannon came out to take pictures of Dina and I riding, and shot a little video which is posted below. I ran my GoPro chest cam. It was wobbly on the choppy snow, but you can watch the video here and get an idea of what the course was like.

Dina and I getting ready to start our race

Dina on the driveway portion of the course. Had to be careful here as it still had some slick ice patches on it.

Me hitting the barriers

Little leaf-shaped ice pieces were all over the ground as the ice began to melt and fall off the weeds and grass

No need for a bike stand when you have a snow drift

Getting a little muddy at the end

Video: Some clips of us riding our snow cross course

     The good thing about Tennessee is that if you don't like the weather, just wait a day or two. As quick as it came, the snow melted and was gone. One day after our snow cross most of the snow was gone. Two days after and it was all gone. Five days after and we were doing another backyard cross race at my parents' house in shorts and short sleeves on a dry trail.

Awesome sunset behind the barn the first day the snow started melting

Back at it on the Backyard trails

Dina

As close to a fly-over as I can get for now

Pushing hard

     I sat my GoPro out on the course during this backyard race with it snapping a picture at the creek crossing every three seconds. That setting got me at least one picture of everyone that rode.

Mom

Shannon

Me

Dina

Shannon

     That does it for January. Still two months behind on my posts, but I'm getting there. More racing in the next blog as we return to Montgomery Bell for Race #2 of the Winter TT Series.