Southern Links Trailway

...Or at least that was the goal on Thursday.

Before indulging in St. Patrick's Day festivities, I decided it would be a good idea to embark on a 60 mile road ride. The goal was to ride from Hadley to Columbiaville on the road (approximately 20 miles), and then ride from Columbiaville to Millington via the Southern Links Trailway (10 miles), and then back. All was going swell until I actually reached the Southern Links Trailway:

Which, to my dissatisfaction, was still thoroughly ensconced in snow and ice.

For the record, it was 67ºF on Thursday. Too warm for legwarmers...but somehow, ice? I decided to bear onward, but after about a quarter mile of the ice-snow mixture, I'd had enough. Also, I fell over and decided staying on the planned course wasn't worth struggling the remaining 19.75 miles and risking MORE ice down my pants.

The skinny cross tires were just not up to the job.

So I took an alternate route. I headed up north along some roads, saw the Columbiaville Trike Guy:

This guy is ALWAYS riding a trike around Columbiaville, even throughout winter. I see him every time I work at the Columbiaville branch library.

I ended up riding around the Lakeville High School in Otisville, then made my way back to Hadley. Total trip (with a few laps of the driveway at the end for good measure) was 50.1 miles. I ended the day with a beer (well...a lot of beer...) at Sherwood Brewing Company with some friends.

The perfect post-ride snack.

Bike bike bike.

Bike bike bike. Yoga yoga yoga. Music music music.

Rinse, repeat. So far I'm liking spring.

Hooray for longer rides!

Hooray for not getting dropped on group rides! (The plan from TrainerDan™is working!)

Hooray for the wonderful taste of beer after a few hours in the saddle!

Hooray for iceless dirt roads!

Hooray for mean people honking at you when you're climbing a hill!

Wait...scratch that last one...

Almost all of the snow and ice is gone again, and I'm feeling good about the upcoming season. It's time to start planning out the races.

These are a given:

Logsplitter (7/16)

Ore to Shore (8/13)

Iceman (11/5)

These are the other races I'm considering:

Barry Roubaix (3/26! Soon!)

Tree Farm Relay (7/23...need a team!)

Stony Creek XC (8/28)

Addison Oaks XC (9/11)

Grampian Challenge (10/1)

Six Hours of Addison Oaks (10/8)

Suggestions? Recommendations? I can't sign up for all of them because I'm a poor librarian, so I want to narrow it down to about six races this year. I really, really want to do an endurance race, but I'm not going to commit to 6 Hours of Addison until later on in the year when I know I'm up to par.

I have a feeling I will be, though. I'm already in better shape and weigh less than I did at Ore to Shore last year, and my pace then was more than decent. Plus, my cross training with yoga is working out great. I haven't had any soreness post-cycling since beginning yoga, and I can feel myself getting a lot stronger and more flexible. However, after nearly falling asleep during shavasana after yesterday's ride, I'm thinking it's a good idea to stagger cycling and yoga so they're not only two hours apart.

Goals for 2011

A year-length bucket list, if you will. I made a similar list in summer, but I only accomplished 4 of the 12 goals. I never really expected to reach all of them—some of my goals are easily attainable, while others are difficult (and some are just plain fantasies). Anyways, here's my list for this year. Hopefully I'll have a better success rate this time around!

1. Go back to school for Environmental Biology/Zoology. This one's pretty much in the bag, unless for some reason MSU declines my application for readmission. I've been looking at programs for the last year and a half, and it finally became feasible.
2. Keep riding the veggie train. I always feel healthier when I stick to a vegetarian diet. This was one of my summer goals that I met—been going strong for about a month now. (Which isn't so easy when you live on an Angus beef farm.)
3. Keep riding, period. This is critical to weight loss, and to getting faster, which leads me to...
4. Get faster. I want to improve my Ore to Shore time by at least 15 minutes, and actually finish Iceman this year.
5. Travel to more places with better hiking than Michigan. Because I want to climb a freaking mountain, not a hill! While I love biking in Michigan, the local hiking leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully I'll get a chance to visit family out west again, and take in some sweet hikes in the process.
6. Save money. This will be difficult with goal #1, but it involves a 2012 goal: attending a mountaineering course at NOLS.
7. Volunteer more! I started doing volunteer work in the wildlife department of the Michigan Humane Society this fall, and hopefully I can find time to step it up a bit with another organization.
8. Actually hike the Porkies. This was in my summer list, but I never got around to it. There was always some excuse—weather, races, my job, the list goes on.
9. Tour Michigan's microbreweries by bicycle. Another from my summer list. Pretty self-explanatory, no? Who's with me?
10. Race more. Entering my first race was one of my summer goals, and I ended up doing 3 in 2010. I want to increase that in 2011—aiming for 6.
11. Ride to one of the Great Lakes. Probably Huron, because it's closest.
12. Hike Isle Royale. I planned on going with the wolf and moose study exhibition in 2010, but it coincided with Ore to Shore. Clearly, Ore to Shore won out for me. I won't have the funds to participate in the study this year (see #6), but I'd still like to hike the whole island.

Oh, and one of the things I'm hoping for is more snow. I finally got my snowshoes (I decided on a pair of MSRs) and all the snow melted. What the hell, Michigan? It's not supposed to be 45ºF in January!