In my humble opinion, the bad idea of the day is to run 50 miles. Off road. In the mud. At 6am. In sub-optimal weather. Over hill and dale and all throughout the Green Mountains of Ascutney, VT for the Vermont 50. Yuck, that sounds miserable.

BUT I’m not a runner. I’m a cyclist, so the idea of mountain biking those 50 miles sounded like an excellent off-season activity. After all, I had a title to defend. Better yet, I had family to see.

My crazy cousin Jay (father to a pair of those children above), his friend Amy (mother to the rest of those children above, myself not included), and about 548 of their good friends took part in the running portion of the Vermont 50. While I think that sounds horribly unpleasant, they both succeeded and had a smashing time in the process.

Backtracking a bit, my cousin’s family and their friend’s family rented a house nearby and made a sweet weekend getaway out of it. The fringe benefit of being their cousin is that I got to tag along. In an awesomely quirky mountain cabin, complete with stuffed dear heads, gazelles, puzzles, and a fire-pit, we had a great time. Plus I got to Vermont in time to see the crew above dominate the mini-run. 1 mile around Ascutney sounds like fun. Multiply that by 50 and that sounds less fun. But that’s just me.

Meanwhile, I woke up at 2:53am so that I could be fully digested and ready to roll at early hour of 6am. Waking up to rumbling thunder and fog and mist so thick that merely driving to the venue seems dangerous was an ominous start to the day. But upon arriving to the race, even before 5am, the energy and excitement of the additional 800 cyclists becomes downright palpable! Or maybe it was just the fog and the two dozen port-o-johns. Either way, people were stoked and so was I! With the ginormous help of the cannon atop my head at the pitch-black hour of 6am under, I was able to take the lead early and carry that momentum to an overall smashing race win… as well as the new course record.

Again, here I am with my adoring familial fans – Anna, Emma, Freddy, Paige, and Luke. (I’m the guy in the middle who is over 5′ tall.)

Oh, well worth the side note: the night before the race before going to bed, these amazing, 3-5 feet tall people performed a talent show. A dancing Luke, the three year old, took the cake in my book.

In addition to that record, I also took home a beautiful glass container of Vermont maple syrup from Top Acres Farm, a block of Vermont’s best known cheese: Cabot Private Stock Cheddar. Plus a pair of Vermont Peanut Butter’s jars of nutty excellence. (Actually that’s an exaggeration; I bought one jar the previous day at race registration – because I think VTPB does great things – but then I won another jar, so that pretty much made my day. If one is good, two are better.)

STRAVA! Plus a handful of well deserved KOMs if you ask me.

Another good idea is to take advantage of the 6am start as it pertains to the rest of your day. Namely, finish up the race a hair after 10am, soak up the limelight of having just won such a massive bike race, bask in the bike cleaning station and warm showers before they become caked in frigid mud, partake in a tasty sponsor beverage, enormous BBQ, and festive music, and STILL have time to drive 3 hours south to eastern Massachusetts and watch the nation’s coolest bike race, GP Gloucester! Take folks, take a page out of my book: you’re not living unless you’re living.

I wisely opted not to double-up and I therefore packed up shop and drove down to MA to watch Gloucester rather than race it. I don’t do well in muddy cross races and this was some of the finest mud America has to offer.

Let the off season adventures continue! Oh speaking of which, I have a really good idea for you…

I am riding parallel to a busy road, so I find myself on a bike path. Very few patrons in sight; in fact, I haven’t seen anyone for a good five minutes. I am approaching what is obviously an elderly lady, who is very well kitted-up on a fancy European bike complete with Euro-stylish riding clothes. That is, she looks both smart and ridiculous.

I slow considerably and upon noticing that she is resplendent with a helmet mirror, I spend a fair amount of time behind her so that she’ll observe that I’m there. I even make some noises and shift and so forth so that she’ll really notice me. I then slowly come back up to speed and approach to her left to initiate the pass. I’m now decently close to her and call out, “On your left”.

It was around about this time that I immediately recognized that she had NO idea I was ever there. She absolutely freaks out, clearly nearly has a heart attack, and cries “Great Jiminy Cricket!” …which just might go down as the best curse word ever. When I’m scared out of my wits I tend towards uttering four-letter words; apparently the elderly crowd in this town happen to be considerable fans of Pinocchio.

Oh and best yet, as she was crying out to Mr. Cricket, she also pulled one of these moves (that is, the awesome shimmying that takes place at 0:13). Thank goodness she stayed upright.

I apologized and she proceeded to scream that “…young man, I am a 75 year old woman! How dare you frighten me like that!” No harm, no crash, no heart attack, no foul. That’s what I always say.

(End of scene. Exit right. Look at trees in the town in which I was just visiting.)

The off-season adventures continue to chug along in high gear. I was easily convinced to go to Interbike for the unveiling of the Cannondale Pro Cycling team. This is enormous news and no better place to tell the world than in SinCity. So that was excellent. Rather than making Vegas a mere 12 hour adventure, I also opted for my first attempts at CrossVegas. My optimism ran high since I had just completed two UCI races the previous weekend, thereby completing 66.667% of my cross season in just two day, and therefore my cross skills were adept and honed. I also still had 10 UCI points from the fall of 2011 at my disposal for an awesome start position.

Wrong. I found out that at a stacked race like CrossVegas – where the beer, credibility, and ego run high – 10 UCI points plants you prominently in row 6. Out of 10.

From Vegas to Boston Criterium. Reaaaaady, and go!

I present unto you Boston’s TD Bank Mayor’s Cup Criterium. I haven’t raced a criterium since I did this one two years ago. So much like the stop-start of a cross race, this isn’t my bag. But it’s oooooh so much fun. If every criterium were run as smoothly and well as this, if every race took place in a major metropolitan city, if every race were thoroughly endorsed by it’s mayor and therefore were able to be run prominently through it’s central city streets, then cycling would gain an enormous foothold in America and everything would be perfect. If only…

So while we wait for that utopia, we graciously accept this amazing race in the meantime.

And then onto more adventures like 2 days in the Rocky Mountains

Followed by a wedding this Friday evening for two great friends, either watch GP Gloucester or attend this once in a lifetime (or once per year, I’m guessing) event on Saturday, and then defend my title in the Vermont 50 marathon mountain bike race on Sunday.

And lest we forget, we are now down to just three weeks and three days until the Krempels King of the Road Challenge. We’re thrilled to announce that Cannondale has generously upped the ante and will give away Cannondale EVO 2 complete with SRAM Red to folks who surpass the $5k mark in fund-raising. So that’s massive. So I encourage you to sign up today and start towards that goal (you have until November 30 to reach that mark, so bonus 1 month+10 days).

And if you can’t make it to NH then you can always participate in the very generous opening of your wallet and helping me reach my goal. A sincere please and thank you.

…Just not outside of my house.

We’re apparently slated for a pretty wicked Nor’Easter with up to 2 feet of snow expected. I went to bed last night – a merry Christmas December 25th night that is – with the full expectation of waking up to a festive white abyss out the window today. Instead I woke up to dry roads and nary a snowflake in sight. So I took the opportunity to grab an hour on the road bike and then swing through home sweet home to get my brother and then we could meet some other friends for a mountain bike jaunt up Mt. Pawtuckaway as the snow began falling. Yup, and that’s what I did.

Alas, I returned home after the road hour and found Robbie still fast asleep (…in his defense it was not yet 9am. AAaaand yes, I’m still suffering a bit of early morning jet-lag). Furthermore, it was also a brisk 21 degrees Fahrenheit outside and considerably warmer in his bed at that hour.

Anyway, Robbie wasn’t interested in getting out of bed, spandexing up and onto a bike, so I swapped my road shoes for the mountain variety and set off in search of the Day-After-Christmas-Mountain-Bike-Crew. I arrived with two minutes to spare, but didn’t see anyone nor their cars… nor bikes. Figuring that they aborted – or more accurately, I figured that I picked the incorrect of two parking lots at the base of the mountain – I just headed up Pawtuckaway solo.

It was a very pleasant ride and eventual summit. Here’s a photo atop the legendary summit.

I did eventually run into my mountain biking comrades, but we were traveling in opposite directions and I unfortunately was on something of a time budget that I couldn’t budge from. Namely, come back and hang with the fam. But it was good to pass along post-Christmas salutations and exchange down mitten high fives… or is it a high two?

The way I figure it, it’s cold and harsh New England winter, so there are no roses available to stop and smell. But if you don’t stop and smell the roses, you may as well at least stop and take a picture every now and again.

Life’s an adventure. Remember that.