I realize that I will get the usual "IT LIVES!!" and "Bout time!" types of replies to my all-but-abandoned blog, but I just get in those moods sometimes where I would rather read than write. But I digress.

I am planning to ride the Iron Mountain 100k on July 12 in Damascus. It won't be an easy task and I don't plan for it to be much fun. 62 miles on Iron Mountain is enough to make someone hate a bike for a long time. Hell, I've ridden 10 mile rides up there that make life miserable, but I always go back.

Yesterday, seven of us ventured to parts of the course I had never been, mainly the FR climb from the bottom of Jerry's Creek up to Barton Gap. When I first saw the map of this course and realized that we would be doing most of our climbing on fire roads I didn't think much of it and was quite relieved. My perception of this changed yesterday. We climbed the FR from Jerry's Creek to Barton Gap then to Skulls Gap, all of about 7 miles of it. The course will actually turn onto Skulls Gap trail about a half mile from the top, but it took FOREVER to climb to that point. Sprinkle in my crash into a rocky ravine at mile 5 (of a 25 mile ride) coming down Jerry's Creek that left me barely able to use my left leg from the worst charlie horse I've ever had, along with the flat tire I got before the FR climb that I still had to stop and pump up about every 10-15 mins and my complete disregard for nourishment. I took no food, no gels and no gatorade. All I had was a camelback full of water that I was almost glad to finish off because it was pretty warm near the end of the ride.

As I topped FR84 to descend back down to the main road, Doug, one of the guys that rode with us, was driving his truck up the FR to see if I or Jon wanted a ride back to the cars. I had ridden that far with a partially flat and still deflating tire, no fuel and a bum leg, I'll be damned if I'm not finishing it. So I coasted to the end of the ride in so much pain I was almost in tears.

The 100k is gonna suck much worse than Sunday's ride, but I will have the benefit of rest stops, food, cold water and the same insane determination that got me through Sunday's ride.

Here is the Garmin data for the ride if you care. The elevation will be off because, well, because it always is.

Amanda is starting an eight week running program that gradually builds up her strength and endurance for running. My leg hurts like MOTHERF*&$#ER today, but I'm gonna run with her. I think she will do well!

It seems like this week has lasted forever, but alas, it is the weekend. Amanda and I had plans of camping this weekend with my sister and bro-in-law, but sudden events prevented that. On Monday, Amanda's uncle was admitted to the hospital. He had been in a fight with lung cancer for a couple of years now, but around 9:30 last night, he passed away. Amanda spent everyday since Monday hanging at the hospital to be with her family. I went over fairly often myself, but managed to get some work in as well. I'll miss Alan, he was a good guy. I hated to see him in the condition he was in, but when I think of him, I'll probably only remember the better times. Funny how the brain works that way.

On a much lighter note, Amanda and I made a trip to K-Mart the other night. It's the closest mega-store to us, so we visit it often. Sometimes the K Mart will have bikes on display in the aisles, recently a 3-wheeled beach cruiser type with a basket on the back and a tailgate. I usually hop on one and ride it around the sporting goods department and embarrass Amanda, but the trip on Wednesday night was different. As we walked by electronics a shiny brown bike caught my eye, a beach cruiser. I walked over to it and was diggin' the color. I said, "Oh man, I want this", which is usually what I say when I'm around bikes. Amanda usually replies, "Another friggin' bike?! You are not getting another bike", but Wednesday night she said, "Well, get it". Say what? Oh yeah, she said I could buy it! This doesn't happen often, so I jumped on it. Jumped on it as in buy it, not jump on it ride it.








There are a few things I need for it, a headlight, some sweet mirrors and a rear rack. I hope to be sportin' this lil' lady at the next CRAWL. I'll even give her a name.

Not much going on early this week, but I do have an update from this past weekend's Animal Chase 5K. I placed 37th out of 94 runners. Better than mid-pack, but it friggin' hurt. I'm not much of a runner, other than the 2-ish miles a few guys and myself run every Wed. during lunch, so I didn't really have high expectations.

I started the run at a pretty brisk pace for my fitness level. I wanted to keep that pace the whole time. First mile down, just at seven minutes. I get not even 1/4 mile past the mile marker and already I see the leaders heading back to the start/finish, so quick oxygen-deprived math says they're doing it in 16 minutes or so. Turns out the 5k was just a warm-up run for these guys for the 10k after. The second half of the run is basically a slow uphill grade that is totally noticeable on the run back, not so much on the first half of the run. I pushed myself as hard as I could. I could feel my abs getting tight, my shoulders were hurting pretty bad and every time I turned my head in any direction, I got really dizzy twisting it back to look ahead. As I approached the finish line, I could hear people behind me panting and stomping their heavy feet and one kid was on the side of the trail, "Go Dad! You got it! You can pass him Dad! Pass him Dad!" I'm not sure if "Dad" was behind me or not, but I was damned if I were going to let him pass me at the finish line, so I did the best version of a sprint to the finish I could muster up...and no one passed me.

At the end, my time was 26 minutes 26 seconds for a 5k. Not too bad.

It was nice to get out and suffer doing something other than riding a bike. I do enjoy bike riding, but a change is good sometimes and I've really taken to this whole running thing. Maybe I'll go get a new pair of runnin' shoes?

Is it just me or has it been forever since I've posted anything? It's not that I haven't had content, it's just that I haven't had the time. Lots of stuff has happened since my last post though, but too much time since the events make them completely irrelevant to blog about.

But it's Friday which means that something good should come out of this weekend if all goes right. Nate asked me about a 5K & 10K going on tomorrow morning at the Creeper Trail. I may be down for the 5K. Work has been stupid stressful so I think a good run, possibly in the rain, will be quite refreshing. The only problem is that it starts at 8 a.m., but I think I can swing it.

One complaint today, and actually probably the first complaint I've ever posted here, about Facebook. I dig FB, it's way better than MySpace. MS just seems cluttered and I rarely ever see my public profile, so it never gets updated, and rarely do I go to other peoples' profiles and just browse while muting the seven videos and 12 songs they have playing all at once. Anyway, I digress, FB has these apps, you can grow a virtual garden, pick your favorite rock band, find out your punk rock star equivalent, slice onions and advocate world peace. So daily in my "Notifications" tab, I get requests to join these apps and games of which one of my FB friends invites me to be a part of, but lately it seems like I get a lot of them that mislead me and I'm fairly certain FB adds them to my page and says "*insert friend's name here* has *insert verb here* see what you *insert call to action here*". It is very rare that I click on any of these, but sometimes they trick me. So no more... I will no longer accept any invitations or what look to be invitations, to any app on FB, hell, I may give up FB all together and start devoting more time to my newly created Twitter account. You will be able to get all you Anthony Duncan updates from there. I'll post more about it later, gotta save something for another blog, geez!

Been a long couple of weeks lately. I went over to Knoxville to catch a ride of some sort with my brother last weekend. He had to work on Saturday, but I met up with Dave Lane and Doug and we got in a nice 35 miles on the road bikes. It rained on me all the way over on Saturday, but it turned out to be a sunny 70 degrees that afternoon and I was waaaay overdressed on the ride. I sweat enough to fill a couple of buckets I'm sure.

Seriously, that's what the almost-toothless guy next to me said right after Frank Beamer said "Gentlemen, start your engines" on Sunday at the Food City 500 in Bristol. I was fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on your perception of Nascar racing) enough to get tickets to not only Sunday's Food City 500, but also Saturday's Scott's 300.

This past weekend was unproductive, but productive. No rides at all, mainly because of the weather...it sucked. But, Amanda and I came one step closer to being hitched. We both now have wedding bands that we plan to slide onto our fingers at some point in the near future. And since I don't have a fancy titanium bike, I instead now have a fancy titanium ring that I'm not wearing at the moment. We're scheduled for an ocean-front wedding sometime in early to mid-September, nothing big, just the two of us, a preist/justice of the peace, or whatever and some hermit crabs. Should be nice.