For the past four years, I’ve ridden the two-day Escape to the Lake MS Ride, which goes from Lake Arthur in Moraine State Park, through rolling Pennsylvania farmland, finally dropping gently to the shore of Lake Erie in at Conneaut Township Park in Ohio. It’s been the first big ride of each summer century season since I moved to Pittsburgh back in ( Read more... )

Last weekend was my fourth Escape to the Lake MS Ride, and fourth century of 2019. It was a beautiful and enjoyable two-day odyssey up to the Lake Erie shore.

Of course, the most pertinent element of my preparation was spending the winter on Zwift, plus the three centuries I’d recently completed.

I also put into practice two lessons gleaned from ( Read more... )

There are two kinds of rainy days on the bike. There’s days with passing showers but things dry out quickly; and there’s day-long pouring rain that leaves you no choice but to slog through to the end of the ride.

This year’s Escape to the Lake MS Ride had one day of each kind.

To be fair, it’s been that kind of year. As I wrote in my last post, ( Read more... )

I biked in Boston for 15 years, doing over 50 centuries in numerous events. To my recollection, in all that time I only ever received two medals as a result. The first was from the Audax Club Parisien for my first 200k brevet; the other was for the 2015 Cape Cod Challenge MS Ride.

Although I rode 14 consecutive Pan-Mass Challenges, the most I ever ( Read more... )

One of my cycling goals for 2017 was to ride both days of this year’s Escape to the Lake MS Ride.

Last year I rode the 100-mile first day, which was brutally hot and my hardest ride in more than seven years according to Strava’s “Suffer Score”, but I avoided the logistical challenge of riding the 65-mile second day.

However, this year I convinced ( Read more... )

Last weekend was my second century of the year and first Pittsburgh charity ride: the Bike MS Escape to the Lake, which goes from Moraine State Park an hour north of Pittsburgh to the shore of Lake Erie. Rather than do the whole route and deal with an overnight stay, I preferred to do the first day century route and quit there.

The forecast was ( Read more... )

One of the ironies of being hired by Buildium was that they field a team for the Cape Cod Getaway MS Ride. Being well-known for my cycling, I was pretty much obligated to ride, despite having made a big deal about quitting the PMC-the big charity ride I’ve been involved with for 14 years-last year. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to the MS Ride ( Read more... )