endless hills & John’ s shoes
John Dimon (one of my sponsors, and owner of Dimon Sports) and I did a ride that was simply straight up and down all day long. Beautiful rural Virgil & Cortland NY (greek peak ski area is just out of sight to the left) is definately cycling for crazy people. We would climb for 20 minutes, then descend like a comet for 5, climb for 15, descent for 2, climb for 30 minutes, then descend for 10… My average HR was 155, but I don’t recall ever seeing 155 on the monitor, it was always 175 or 130! I could have done this ride on a 2 speed bike, providing that those 2 speed were the 39-23 and the 53-13!
This is john hammering on one of the very nasty climbs, he used to actually live in the middle of this hill, and ride it every day. Whatta stud, watch out masters racers! John is getting back into racing shape!!
In an extremely weird twist of strange minds thinking alike, John is the only other person I have ever met who also loves super old school time cycling shoes. I use the exact same model of late 80’s vintage shoes John is wearing here. I keep thinking one of these years I should replace them, but I have never found anything that fits my feet like these. Neither has John.
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6 Responses to “endless hills & John’ s shoes”
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Hey Andrew. Great ride! You really inspired me! Obviously that relatively small hill in the picture is the one I blew up on! What a beautiful day! I used to be in really good shape because I had to ride over all those hills just to get places. Ah, the benifits of utilarian cycling. Here’s to many more great rides! We weren’t to far from the highest point in Cortland County. Next time we will ride right to it ( but we need mountain bikes…and a metal detector to find the marker. It is in the middle of a patch of pine trees! ).
Hey that sounds like fun! Send us some nice weather! A few of us went for a ride on saturday and got poured on for a few minutes…you know when you can just see it coming… We were in a silly enough mood that once the rain had let up, Brenda noticed a small dry spot on the road in front of us and said, “look, a dry spot” and I said “woohoo, let’s go sunbathe in it!!” (It was not sunny.) Then I commented that I didn’t know why I’d said it, and we practically fell off the bikes laughing.
carla, I have often thought that you would really enjoy the completely vertical nature of upstate NY riding (there is a massive ski area just to the left of this photo)
I would send you any nice weather that we have, but it left as quickly as it came in, it’s back to 50, windy, and off and on rain..
if you fell off the bike laughing? what kind of injury would it be? especially if you broke your funny bone in the crash…..
I will think of you and brenda sunbathing the next time I see a dry spot in the pavement..
Hey Andrew and John,
I remember those grueling rides I did when I visited in Cortland a couple of times. Once John and I got caught in 3 thunderstorms but kept on riding to total 51 miles that day! Can’t wait to come up for Ironman weekend! I’d like to do the big loop at some point. Let’s plan to ride. Maybe Whiteface? Been doing alot of riding by myself during the week for an hour or two. Next tour for me is Lancaster, PA.
john your my hero
Hey JD!
Lookin’ good my friend! Got your note…hey, I think it’s awesome you’re back on your wheels. Thanks for mentioning this site…I’ve been reading and am finding it very enjoyable. It’s reassuring to read that other skaters push themselves into the depths of “what the hell am I doing this for?” exhaustion, to step back and answer to themselves “because it’s my dream”.
The weather has finally broken..and I’ve been cranking out the miles. We should try to get together and do a ride up your way; hopefully before my legs fall off from dryland! Haha! Take it easy…