Spent the majority of the weekend on the bike and though my toes were permanently chilled and my legs are a bit trashed I loved every second of it. Saturday I “raced” my first Alleycat race with the dcfixed.com crew and had a blast and met a bunch of new cool people in the process. We rode all over the city from Dupont to RFK to Lincoln Circle to Logan Circle to Hains Point to the Sculpture Garden to the new Bike Rack store on Q St to Logan… Well, you get the idea. I rode the fixed gear and there was a constant headwind no matter which way we were going so it was definitely a workout but it was oh so much fun.
I didn’t really know what to expect and just planned on tooling my way through the race, but when it started and everyone started running for their bikes I got excited and took off down 14th St ready to compete. I rode the first bit along and ended up joining up with some people along the way and after realizing I was not where near 1st sort of eased up a bit. I ended up 6th overall though and more importantly had a blast riding the ride. The checkpoints along the way included getting hardboiled easter eggs and doing jumping jacks with them in our mouths, eating pickles and gefilte fish, asking tourists to do funny things and pose for pictures and all sorts of fun stuff (the worst of which being refilling our flat tires after the checkpoint “marshal” let it all out while we were eater egg hunting.
But overall it was totally worth it and I believe the only accident occurred when one of the riders was hit by an excited Japanese tourist running down a set of stairs. Thank goodness for no fatalities or injuries!
Sunday went on what turned out to be a long moderate base mile ride with a couple of guys from RU and had a blast trying to keep up with Joe as he tore up the hills along the way. Ended up putting in about 55 or 60 miles of good anaerobic work in and am hoping to reap the benefits come the Carl Dolan Classic in a couple of weeks. Today however my legs feel completely spent. Am contemplating the hill ride again but I’m not quite sure I’ve got the energy. Got about 45 minutes to decide though.
Showing posts with label DCFixed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCFixed. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
RL's got nothin on this Polo
This post should have been up Friday, but unfortunately I was moving and thinking a bit slowly after a late Thursday night.
I’d been wanting to catch up with some of these guys from the DCFixed discussion board that I’d found after tracing a link from one of their threads to a post on my blog. On Thursday nights a bunch of them play bike polo down in SE DC at a court that has been set up for roller hockey with the side boards and all. After grabbing a few drinks with the typical Thursday happy hour crew I hopped the fixie down to Rush Rink at 13th and D SE and found the first game just about to begin. I sat on the side with another first timer and watched for the first game before playing the next couple of games.
In the end I came out with a bloody nose, a banged up knee, a twisted headset, more crashes under my belt then I’ve had in the past year and a half of city riding and a big ear to ear grin on my face. While it’s pretty tough to get a handle on, bike polo is an extremely fun and challenging game. As for injuries; it’s like my father always used to tell me about anything and everything I didn’t want to do or when I got hurt or… everything really, it builds character! (This little saying was also brought up by Tink on DCFixed for concrete crashes).
Anyway, the group seems like a great crew and after joining them for a “drink” at another player’s bar I drunken cycled home sometime around midnight. My single beer quickly spiraled into a couple of pitchers a random shot of who knows what and an Irish Car Bomb with the bartender Shane for good measure. Apparently this is more commonly referred to by the group as “getting Shaned”, hence the lack of my Friday post.
I spent the amazing weekend outside working an animal adoption event in Bethesda Saturday afternoon and riding a nice easy ride through downtown afterwards. Sunday, I got caught up in the parade festivities of the Garrison Frisbee crew before heading back down to the SE area to help clean up another basketball court area for some more bike polo.
*Marathon countdown: 6 days baby!
I’d been wanting to catch up with some of these guys from the DCFixed discussion board that I’d found after tracing a link from one of their threads to a post on my blog. On Thursday nights a bunch of them play bike polo down in SE DC at a court that has been set up for roller hockey with the side boards and all. After grabbing a few drinks with the typical Thursday happy hour crew I hopped the fixie down to Rush Rink at 13th and D SE and found the first game just about to begin. I sat on the side with another first timer and watched for the first game before playing the next couple of games.
In the end I came out with a bloody nose, a banged up knee, a twisted headset, more crashes under my belt then I’ve had in the past year and a half of city riding and a big ear to ear grin on my face. While it’s pretty tough to get a handle on, bike polo is an extremely fun and challenging game. As for injuries; it’s like my father always used to tell me about anything and everything I didn’t want to do or when I got hurt or… everything really, it builds character! (This little saying was also brought up by Tink on DCFixed for concrete crashes).
Anyway, the group seems like a great crew and after joining them for a “drink” at another player’s bar I drunken cycled home sometime around midnight. My single beer quickly spiraled into a couple of pitchers a random shot of who knows what and an Irish Car Bomb with the bartender Shane for good measure. Apparently this is more commonly referred to by the group as “getting Shaned”, hence the lack of my Friday post.
I spent the amazing weekend outside working an animal adoption event in Bethesda Saturday afternoon and riding a nice easy ride through downtown afterwards. Sunday, I got caught up in the parade festivities of the Garrison Frisbee crew before heading back down to the SE area to help clean up another basketball court area for some more bike polo.
*Marathon countdown: 6 days baby!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)