Ted King’s muddy finale to the 2011 season

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (VN) — Liquigas-Cannondale’s Ted King just can’t seem to get enough of the bike this year.

The New Hampshire resident wrapped up his road season at the Montréal and Québec races last month.

But “that’s a bit early,” King told VeloNews on Saturday. “So I’m having fun in the dirt.”

King jumped into a Wednesday-night cyclocross training race at the University of New Hampshire a few weeks ago, won the event and had fun. So he went to a UCI race in Vermont a few days later and finished fifth. “So I said, ‘I can do this ‘cross thing,'” he said.

So King did a few more cyclocross races and also jumped into the Vermont 50, a 50-mile mountain bike race, last week. He won that in muddy conditions, despite having done a ‘cross race the day prior.

In between these races, King hasn’t been shy about putting in the road miles. He did a eight-hour, 150-mile ride last Tuesday and a 5 1/2-hour ride on Friday. On Saturday he raced the elite men’s race at the Gran Prix of Gloucester and finished 34th, fending off more than a few ‘cross fanatics who were determined to beat the roadie who had invaded their slippery turf.

King said all the racing and long miles are coming easy. He missed a few weeks of training after an injury at the Philadelphia championships, but the recent miles are not an effort to regain fitness: after all, he raced the Tour of Utah, the USAPCC and the Canadian races after coming back from the injury.

“It’s not to regain fitness, I just love to ride,” he said.

King doesn’t plan to race Sunday in Gloucester and he’s headed to Italy next week to take of some things at his apartment there. He’ll be back in the U.S. soon, though, to ride October 15th’s Krempels King of the Road Challenge, a charity ride on some of his favorite roads in southern New Hampshire. The ride benefits a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people living with brain injury from trauma, tumor or stroke.