20 some odd miles this morning. As I crossed the Black River I looked right and there was a hawk flying next to me with a squirrel hanging from his tallons.

played around at the local college, parks, and schools for about an hour on the cross bike.

32 miles from evening into night. Dark lonely roads with rustling cornfields on both sides brought up thoughts of the movie "Children of the Corn".

Wind wind wind wind...... 40+ miles.

5 hours at Ray's...I am bushed!

5 hours!? Crazy.

I had 60 minutes of cross. It was my worst race of the year, but I don't care... The beer handups were fun!

10am till 3pm......not all riding time but most of it was...

10/31 28 miles, after a college visit with son, even with the rather strong winds, not a bad ride.

OCTOBER damage, 862 total miles in 20 days of riding, 43 miles/ride ave.
Total for the year=9097 (903 to go). Swim team starts Nov 9th and the change in time are going to hurt the miles!

Gary, you will be lucky to be able to ride tomorrow or have you given up on it because of the cold?

I think I can handle 52 degrees.....:roflmao2:

So you got all the cups! I had to use a water bottle to get my Shiner Bock.

What a muddy mess! On the third lap I was hoping to get hit by a car or falling tree in order to abandon, then when riding down a slight grade my bike stopped on it's own. I got off, cleaned the mud, sticks, pine needles and leaves from both brakes then went off on my merry way.:D

Was not a race for us fat guys. Come to think of it, we haven't had any races that were good for fat guys.:cry:

50+ beautiful miles today.... puts me at about 100 for the weekend. Nice.

22 miles - it was a nice day for riding in Chicago area today.

65 miles with 400 friends on the Red Flannel ride. Spent
most of the day with Allegheny Jet and another friend. Weather was nice but a tad chilly. We averaged just south of 20mph but never felt like we were pushing to hard.
The Lorain Wheelman once again did a wonderful job organizing this ride. Rest stops were well stocked and the route was perfectly marked. The homemade food featured at the rest stops made my bibs a tad tighter by the end of the ride :)

11/1, 20 miles
A (rare) nice sunny fall day here.

10/31, 20 miles
Cold cloudy and WINDY.

Only 288 miles for October, 2739 YTD.

11/1 after me and the wife finished our club duties at the Red Flannel ride today, we manned the first rest stop and made pancakes for 400 people as well as other stuff (COOKIES!!!), we got in 49 miles by riding out to the last rest stop that was manned by our very own Momof4.

Gary glad you enjoyed your day!!

fixed:)

It was a fun day working the rest stop, nice seeing you and Tina......I kept hearing what a great job you guys do at Mill Hollow!

And I had the pleasure to meet some BF'ers for the first time, O'war and O'war's Dad, and BikeJunkie (hi Don!), and Allegheny Jet....it was very nice meeting you all.

23 miles today...was chilly, but very nice. hit 2000 miles for the year

About 13 miles today. Little cold but really not a bad day for a ride consider it was November 1st.

10/31 - nada
11/1 - nada

God awful month of October for me thanks to the on/off rainy weather, the fricken rt. 59 construction and the colder weather. Only got in 141.5 miles for month. 2304.9 YTD.

60 minutes of cross

am I the only one who finds it strange that cross gets measured in time and not distance? I think that's my inhibitor with cross.... it seems like you don't call up your buddy and say, "hey want to go cross riding?" you practice then do an event. So you practice for a block of time and that's that?

Is there, for lack of a better word, "recreational cross"? Do you ever just hit the trails with a cross bike??? does this make any sense?

The cross races are measured in time. I.e. C races are 30 min, B's are 45 and A races are 1 hr. It think we base our training on the race times. For instance I'm a B rider so my race intervals are determined by the race length where an A rider may do longer race pace intervals. My practices also include dismount/mounting drills, short Z5 hill repeats sometimes with off the bike carries, then end with the intervals. Sometimes the intervals are 4 x 8 minutes with 5 to 7 minute recovery then the next time may be 2 x 18 to 20 minutes with 8 to 10 min recovery. When practice is over I use time to measure the practice since I may only have traveled 12 or less miles during the session.

I have done easy recovery days by riding the cross bike to a local park with mtb trails. Along the way I'll try to ride in the grass along the right of way that includes a golf course that extends along the road for 1.5 miles. On the mtb trails there are always guys on cross or hardtail bikes.

Yes, I ride my SS CX bike on singletrack all the time.

Thanks guys! Hope it didn't seem like I was knockin' you or anything... I really want to try the cross thing, but was/am having a difficult time justifying it to myself. I'd love to call my friends up to go "cross riding", but I have no idea what that would be.

I guess here (Columbus), the Alum Creek trails would be good? But, if I'm doing that and not cross racing, then I guess I should just stick to the mountain bike for that, eh?

And that's where I get "crossed up" if you will. Just going recreational cross riding with no intention of competing puts me at trail riding which puts me on my mountain bike, right? Sigh. If I can't convince myself, I'll NEVER convince my infinitely smarter CFO (my wife).

lol.

Well, a CX bike is a swiss-army knife kinda bike. It can be your road bike, MUP bike, a fun switch from a mtn bike for tamer singletrack, etc. I love my CX bikes and ride the singlespeed far more than any of my other bikes. I won't presume to tell you what to buy, but I will say that if I could have only one bike, it's be a cyclocross bike, well, maybe a monstercross. :D