DougNog: Revolution Resolutions: Revival

I' ve been wanting to revive the Dougnog Blog for a few years now. I've occasionally made a post or two to try and kickstart the effort, but to no avail. The blog has pretty much sat unattended and neglected for the past few years but today is the first day of 2013 and since New Years and "firsts" are a great opportunity to start over. I am taking the opportunity to start now and I resolve to post a couple times per week.

If you, gentle reader, want to find out about my kiddo and my home life try me over at the Babycakes Blog because this one is going to focus on my personal selfish thoughts and ambitions. This is the place for things bike and such.

So, where am I am cycling-wise right now.

I'm thinking that on this first day of the year that I will take it off in order to recover for the rest of the year. No, its to spend time with family and recover from the past 3 days of riding that I've done, most of it above 7000 and in adverse winter conditions. I'm just happy to have been on my bike and in retrospect it was well worth the effort to bring my bike to AZ on this trip. The cycling highlights:

1- First day ride in 65 and sunny conditions, 45+ miles.
2- The Shootout! I just couldn't hang when the going got tough but after a couple big rides and bad fitness I was expecting as much. I put myself in cruise control on the runup to the topout and regrouped with a small bunch and another hour down the road I managed to regroup for a fairly blistering return to Tucson in a 20-person paceline. I was on my Fuji disc cyclocross bike with 32 Panaracer Ribmos that performed and felt great on the road inspite of its clunky wheels, but I was able to go from full-on road race rides one day and then hitup some sweet singletrack the next with just a tire swap.
3- The Tucson 24-hour Course ride. 3-hours of sweet singletrack on Christmas Eve.
4- Flagstaff snow ride.

A couple of my latest Flagstaff-area rides. This first takes me from Annie's brothers off-the-grid house and into some pretty rugged cycling terrain for a cyclocross bike. I didn't expect as much snow and some of it, as well as the cinder dust, was nearly unrideable.

This is after 11-miles in 1.5 hours of tough riding. I had been unsure of exactly where I was as the temps plummeted and darkness and a storm began setting in, but I finally hit a road and just had to suck it up and get home. Didn't actually make it all the way... called for a pickup.