Yes the “Plus Two” does mean 2 more insanely steep and leg punishing climbs than just twelve. The official Dirty Dozen has always had 13 climbs, but there is one climb that is both long and gets above 16% that “isn’t counted”. I had the pleasure of doing my final training ride last week with the founder of this punishfest, Mr. Million Mile Man himself, Danny Chew (center of the pic, without the Global Ride kit). When I asked him why it wasn’t included, he said it …

As is customary, I’ve opened my big mouth and am faced with the proverbial “put up or shut up”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to trash talk and overstate my abilities. However, I am one that is always challenging others to accomplish things they think are bigger than themselves; to push past their own perceived limits and discover things about themselves they never knew. Sounds all good so far, but I have a basic life philosophy that tends to get me in trouble. To …

OK, I admit it, I’m an obsessive jock. All my earliest memories involve some sort of sport. It was baseball, football, wrestling and diving when I was a kid. My jockular puruits turned to tennis and golf when I hit college (even the football team’s water boy was bigger than me at Penn State). Outside of being “vertically challenged”, I guess the individual sports appealed to the control freak in me. Consequently, I have always been accustomed to training and improving in one sport or …

Well, OK… maybe not just like Lance. Nina and I (father/daughter) are indeed ahead of schedule! Chris Charmichael wrote about how Lance was ahead of schedule as he prepared for his first tour event of the season, and well, I at least want to be just like Lance. This Sunday was just our 2nd ride outside since the fall, and we had planned on only 30 miles with some climbing, since last week we did 20 with no climbing. After the first half of the ride, …