Gimme a break

OK this has just gotten ridiculous. Yes that is snow in the picture and it is the end of May for crying out loud. I got off of work a little early yesterday thinking I could get a few things done. I pulled up to my house around 2pm and saw the white nonsense on the ground. I hit the clicker to open my garage door and nothing. I figure the power is out so I hop out of the car and head through the front door. As I open the door I hear the doorbell ringing, and ringing, and ringing, nonstop. I walk through the kitchen into the hallway to yank the doorbell off the wall to shut it up when I notice a puddle of water on the kitchen floor by the garage door. Now I'm just confused. After a couple hours of investigation I realized the little AM storm yesterday hit our neighborhood particularly hard. The wind was blowing horizontal right at my doorbell so it got water in it causing it to ring incessantly. The massive amount of precipitation we received leaked through the garage roof and on the garage door opener which killed the radio receiver for the opener. The garage roof also leaked right by the kitchen door letting water into the kitchen. Oh, and most of the plants we planted a couple weekends ago were destroyed by the snow/rain/hail mix. Oh, the joys of home ownership.

Worked over.

I've never felt so worked over after a race. I don't know what it was but after this race I just wanted to go home, curl up in bed and pass out for a month. Standing around in the cold waiting for Rhonda to collect her ribbon was pure misery. My legs ached and I could barely keep my eyes open. I guess that meant I had a good race.

There were close to 20 guys lined up with me at the start, only 13 or 14 finished. The pace from the start was predictably fast since the singletrack started 100 yards from the line. I didn't want to be "that guy" who hung everybody up so I took it easy off the line and settled in near the back. Unfortunately after crossing the water I realized I was stuck behind "that guy" so I hung on his wheel till the first road section. Passed him and a few others on the first bit of road but once I hit the BST I started getting caught up behind the expert women. On the climb I concentrated on reeling in the rest of the expert women so I could enjoy the full extent of bombing down Clarks with one way traffic. Unfortunately there must have been a horse parade up Clarks in the rain storm because the trail which was buff on Saturday was postholed from the ponies on race day. My legs were pumped from the downhill but my HR recovered so I slugged across the BST. Pre-race I was concerned about the lack of passing on the BST and my concern proved warranted. Since I start with the first group of sport men and I am among the slowest of all sports I get passed A LOT. Most people were polite, waited for an opening and went. A few didn't wait for an opening, didn't even announce their pass and tried to muscle by me. Twice this resulted in getting tangled up and once on a corner I was literally pushed off the trail into the trees resulting in a nice tear in my brand new jersey. My favorite pass was by Napoleon Dynamite himself (yes apparently he races Icup). I heard somebody approaching me from behind huffing like a freight trail. "Gosh, I need to pass" he said. I said "call it and I'll move". "I need you to flippin' pull over, gosh". "Everybody else is getting by me just fine" I said. Napoleon replied "You know, there's like a boat-load of gang members on my team. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bow staff so you better pull over". (OK maybe I made the last line up but the rest was pretty close to word for word) He finally got by me at the first road crossing and proceeded to eat shit and get in my way on the first corner after the road. Later just after the start of the 2nd lap I saw him taking the walk of shame back to the start area. Retard. I did what I could through the golf course and BBQ alley but my energy was waining fast. I hadn't fed well and was feeling it. This is becoming a consistent problem that I need to address. Took a few big pulls on my bottle through the start/finish area and headed out for the 2nd go around. By the time I hit the BST my energy drink had kicked in and I got my legs back. I lapped a few beginners and got lapped by a bunch of experts. I got passed by Mike Oblad with about 100 yards to go but figured what was the difference between 13th and 14th so I let him go. It was actually the difference between 8th and 9th with eighth being the lucky number for a swag giveaway. I was kinda upset by that. I love swag like no other! I ended up 9th out of 14 or so with a bunch of DNF's. The race was fun but I'm not sure how many more of the mostly singltrack races I want to do until I get faster. It's pretty annoying not being able to get any rhythm going on the singletrack because I'm getting passed all the time.

Rhonda had a good race. She hung with Tasha and Dot until the climb where they dropped her. Normally she would use her mad DH skills to try to catch back on but Tasha and Dot's homecourse advantage erased Rhonda's small DH advantage and she never saw them again. Tasha rode strong for the win and Rhonda held Jolene off for 3rd.

Solitude Icup postponed

Bad year for MTB racing. Looks like Ed has accepted the inevitable and postponed the Solitude Icup race. On the website it shows the date for the race as TBD. I just hope he doesn't move it to 4th of July weekend. It's one of our favorite races but we've got non-refundable plane tickets to visit with the parental units back in Michigan that weekend.

Commuting and Racing?

Do bike commuting and bike racing on the same day mix? I'll find out today. Since the race starts right after work tonight neither Rhonda nor I will have time to get home before heading to Draper. Instead of both of us driving separate to the race I decided to ride to work and then ride to Rhonda's office after work so we could drive to the race together. The race has been shortened and I usually have more energy in the afternoon so I figured it would work out fine. If it doesn't I have a great excuse for getting shelled.

Best laid plans

Had big plans for the weekend some worked, some didn't but that's OK. California Bob and Lola were in town for the weekend. He made the trip out to accept the quite prestigious award for best doctoral dissertation of 2007 in the school of medicine up at the U. The award has a name which escapes me but the gist of the award is that California Bob is really smart and they gave him some $$ and a nice plaque for his office wall at Genentech because of it. Since MTB'ing and especially MTB racing blow in the Bay Area compared to Utah he decided to spend some of his prize money renting a Carbon Rush from the shop and signing up for the Draper race on Memorial day. The weather looked pretty sketchy for the weekend but we were going to make it work. We picked the bike up Saturday am and got to the equestrian center around 11AM for a course pre-ride. Reports on the course conditions were sounding pretty gloomy but we were going to ride what we could. Surprisingly the mud at the top had dried by the time we got there and we had a great time ripping 1.5 laps of the course. Sunday night the weather for Monday looked glum but we were hoping the showers would hold off at least until the starting gun. No such luck. It poured buckets all night and when I checked the storm totals Monday morning I saw Suncrest has received .36" of rain by 6am with plenty more coming. The race was postponed until Wednesday but California Bob had to be back in San Fran for work this morning. At the announcement of the race postponement and Cali Bob's subsequent withdrawl the whole field of Sport Men 19-29 heaved a sigh of relief at not having to try to match his mad Cali watts all race;-)

My Ex Dentist

I've been going to the same dentist for the ten or so years I've been living in Utah. A co-worker recommended him when I moved here and I liked him from the start. He had a small time operation, just the dentist, a hygentist and a receptionist. His office was well used but tidy and his equipment was older but functional. He was very friendly and never in a rush. A couple years ago I was really busy with work and life and I waited around a year between visits. When I finally made time for a visit it was like walking into a whole new world. The entire office was remodeled. He had taken over an adjacent office, torn down some walls and doubled the size of his office. There were now 7-8 very young women running around in scrubs shuttling between four dental chairs in the back. All the equipment was brand new and the whole office had gone upscale with nice wood paneling etc. The place looked very nice and I was quite impressed. That was until I was taken back to one of the dental chairs. Immediately the hygentist (who looked all of 18 years old) began to criticize me for waiting a year between appointments. I gave my lame excuse about being busy but was due chastised. They took x-rays with the fancy new panorex machine and began my cleaning. As the "teeny bopper" (as I thought of her) was cleaning my teeth she mentioned a few spots that looked "grey" or had "some staining". After she finished my cleaning the dentist came in. The "teeny bopper" told the dentist I had three "areas of concern". The dentist gave me a brief hello, popped on some gloves, had me open wide, picked around for a few seconds, peeked at the x-rays, told me "you have a few areas of concern that should be filled" and left. It took him 2 minutes tops. They shuttled me to the front desk, scheduled me to come back for the fillings and sent me on my way. As I was driving home I had time to contemplate my experience. I was sceptical at first and the more I thought about it the more sceptical I became. See, I haven't had a cavity in over 15 years. Was it pure coincidence that now that the dentist had a fancy new office which must come with a fancy new office payment that I all of a sudden needed a bunch of expensive dental work? I think not! I work in health care and I know how things go. This blog is public so I'll leave it at that, but I knew I should get a 2nd opinion. Trouble was from who? I searched far and wide to try to find a dentist. A lot of people love their dentists but not for what I thought were the right reasons. They would tell me "oh, he's really nice", or "my procedures never hurt" but those aren't good enough for me. I want a dentist who will only do procedures if they are 100% necessary. I'm not scared of getting my teeth drilled I just don't like my body to be messed with unless it needs to be messed with. It took me two years but I finally found my man. A friend of Rhonda's recommended Dr Eric Felt. Rhonda was having a problem with a tooth and wasn't getting straight answers from our current dentist or an endontist so she went to so see Dr Felt. Dr Felt has a small little office and it was just him and a receptionist. Dr Felt actually does the cleanings, xrays and everything himself, no 18 year old hygentist involved. He was very nice and patient with Rhonda and even gave her his home phone number to call if she had any questions. Rhonda was very happy so I set up an appointment with him which I had last night. I was slightly concerned going into the appointment because if I actually did have three cavities waiting two years to get them looked at could lead to problems. To make an already long story shorter he did my exam, took the x-rays and proclaimed me good to go. Surprise, surprise, no cavities. He did see an area on one of my teeth that was a little grey but the x-ray was clean so he said it would be fine to just observe it. He also ground down an area on the front of my two front teeth where there was a residual of cement from my childhood braces that my previous dentist would always just ignore. I'm very happy to have finally found a dentist I feel I can trust and hope to be able to keep seeing him for many years to come.

So much for spring

If I get a chance I may have to run up to Alta to hike for some May powder tomorrow. I'm ready to write off spring and go straight to summer. Anything to get some of that snow melted off my trails.

Windy pre-ride

My 2nd pre-ride in a windstorm this year. The only difference was the Cholla course sucked and the Stan Crane course rules! We got to the Equestrian center around 7PM hoping the rain would hold off for our ride and it did. The pre-ride was uneventful other than the deer over by the golf course that kept racing me up the trail. We suprisingly didn't pick up any goatheads but I was wondering how the non-tubeless people are going to fare on all the high speed curb step-up's on the road crossings. Seems like a high pinch flat probability. The only part of the course that truly sucked was the narrow singletrack on the embankment above the road near the end. Yesterday I hit the sandy section with some speed and it nearly threw me over the edge onto the sidewalk below. I'll have to remember that section during the race. Just got the word that the experts will only do 2.5 laps. That might suck for them a little bit because they'll probably end up having to lap the sports on that last 1/2 lap. There isn't a whole lot of passing room on the back half so sorry in advance if I'm in your way. The code phrase to get me to move over is "I know kung-fu". No code words, no passing, especially if you're wearing the Yellow and Black! Team tactics baby ;-) Of course I'll probably have to lap the sport women doing 1.5 laps instead of 2 so maybe I should be more polite.

The Milcreek Endurance 12

I completed my first endurance event of the year on Saturday. It began with a high quality, cook it yourself, event sponsored pancake, coffee and bacon breakfast at 8AM. The event began at 9AM sharp when I opened the garage door and pulled out the ladder to climb on my roof and get the swamp cooler rolling. Next was the all important snow tire removal. If you mess up this stage of the event your whole day can crash and burn (literally). After that was the tag team section where Rhonda and I washed every window and screen on our house. My favorite part of the event was next where I fired up the sprinklers and tracked down all the leaks. After a succesful sprinkler stage and a short stop at the kitchen table feed zone I moved on to the spectator friendly pool opening stage. The fans love placing bets on whether I'll fall in or not while removing the outlet plugs. The last lap was the digging and planting stage. This years event had the always popular one tree, four bushes and a flat of annuals all ready for me. I finished planting the last bush right at the end of the bell lap for a successful finish to the 12 hour event shortly after 9PM. I celebrated my successful finish with a large glass of 7 and 7, chips and salsa and disc 6 of Battlestar Galactica season 3.

Hit the Home Depot last night.

To the tune of $250. Looks like this will end all hope of racing this weekend. I'll get over it. I've already registered for three out of the next four Icups so I'll have plenty of beatdowns coming my way soon.

I'm 29 again and lovin' it!

I was back on my Salsa 29'er for the first time in a week last night and it was most excellent. I took my Blur to Fruita and yearned for the Salsa all weekend. I love my Blur and all and we have many fond memories together but the Salsa feels like it was made for me and all the stars align when I'm riding it. I got off of work too late to make it up to the Soldier Hollow race last night (I'm sure that will be the theme on Wednesday nights all summer) so I rode Pipeline from my house. Pipeline is open all the way up but if you are one of those unfortunate souls who need to ride pavement to the top forget it. The road is still buried in snow and will be for at least a couple more weeks. The good news is without the Shuttle Monkeys riding the trail the switchbacks just past elbow fork are still going to be buff for awhile. It feels like my climbing legs are starting to come around and I'm dying for some high alpine riding but I'm afraid that isn't going to be happening until at least late June.

Fruita Day 3

No trip is ever perfect no matter how much you want it to be and this trip to Fruita was no exception. After ending "the day that kicked ass" at the Iron Man movie we drove back to our campsite needing a good nights sleep. As we were driving back a wind storm kicked up which pretty much ruined any possibility of a getting much sleep in the tent. We crawled out of the tent at dawn not the least bit rested and packed everything up for our final ride and drive home. We ate breakfast and headed to the Tabeguache or "lunch loops" area. I have always wanted to ride this area which is Grand Junction's version of the BST, but it never seemed to work out. One time I got the flu midway through a Fruita trip and couldn't ride and two other times I got rained out. Since this trip was kinda last minute I didn't have much of an opportunity to plan our ride for the day so I figured I would just look at the map when we got to the trailhead and make a plan from there. Bad idea. I saw a couple of trails that sparked my interest. One was the Ribbon which my friend Ian had ridden before and said was fun and the other was Andy's trail which had a cool name;-) We started off climbing Eagle's trail which was do-able but pretty difficult on tired legs. I later found out this was mostly used as a downhill trail. From Eagles's we cut off on Andy's. After a couple miles on Andy's it became too steep to ride. We seemed close to the top so we chose to walk the last little bit. It ended up being a 3/4 mile hike. At the top I saw the trail turned into a hike a bike portage down to the ravine below. I should have turned back here but I saw the junction to the Ribbon trail far below so we continued hiking. I later learned that we rode this trail backwards as well. We carried our bikes down to the trail junction and headed up the Ribbon. From my crappy map it looked like we were at the high point of the Ribbon trail and it would be a downhill romp to a paved road. We could then take pavement back to the car since it was getting late and threatening rain. Wrong! We were at the bottom of yet another trail that is generally ridden downhill only. By the time I realized this we were halfway up the trail and we decided just to ride it out and use this as a learning experience. From where we started the Ribbon it gained 1500 ft of net elevation in three miles of technical slickrock with more like 2000 ft of total climbing. This was not fun on tired legs from three days of big miles on rough trails. We finished the trail way later than we wanted and were forced to blow the elevation we gained riding pavement with a 30 mph cross wind. Lovely! The good news was the scenery was amazing. It was some of the prettiest riding I have ever done. I also think the trails have a lot of potential to be fun if ridden the proper way (although I don't think Andy's trail would be worth it any way you ride it, too much hike a bike). As always click the pics for the blowup.

View from Andy's Trail

More Andy's Trail
Wide open slickrock field on The Ribbon with Rhonda in the distance.

Fruita day 2

AKA: The Day That Kicked Ass

Woke up Sunday AM, loaded up our stuff and headed to Aspen Street Coffee shop in Fruita where the coffee kicks ass. We sat at an outside table sipped our coffee and ate Natures Path Organic Cherry Pomegran toaster pastries because the weather kicked ass and those pop tarts kick serious ass. After breakfast we headed north on 18 road to the bookcliffs area. We started our day with the classic, Prime Cut to Joes Ridge. Prime Cut is a kick ass middle ring climb rolling in and out of a wash through the juniper trees. Joe's Ridge is a buff, fast and yes, kick ass downhill with some nice steep pitches. Next we climbed Western Zippity with a descent down Zippity Doo Da. Western Zip is another really fun fast climb with great scenery and Zippity Do Da is like Bearclaw Poppy in St George on steroids, oh and of course all narrow singletrack. We finished the day climbing back up Prime Cut to Chutes and Ladders finally screaming back to the parking lot on Vegetarian. Cleaned up a bit and headed to Grand Junction to catch happy hour at the Rockslide Brewery where the food and the beer both kick ass. Finished our day at the Megaplex where we caught Iron Man. I think you know where this is heading. That movie kicks ass and was the perfect ending to the day that "kicked ass"

Click the pics for the blow-up view to get a real feel for the quality singltrack rolling away as far as the eye can see.

Looking Down Joes Ridge

Joes Ridge

Western Zip Climb
Zippity Doo Da
Zippity Descent

(kind of a crappy picture, it's much steeper than this makes it look)
Vegetarian

Fruita Day 1

Fruita is a very interesting place for riding. While you're there you can't believe how much much fun it is and once you've left your mind can no longer comprehend it. Within a week of getting back I subconsciously begin to dumb the trails down because I think to myself that no place can possibly be that much fun. Once your back in Fruita and rolling on the BEST singletrack on the planet you realize not only is it as fun as you remember, it's funner!

We left Salt Lake a little later than I wanted to on Saturday but we still got to Fruita around 1:30 pm. We drove up to the Colorado National Monument, set up camp, suited up and headed to the Kokopelli loops trailhead by the Colorado river. We were in the saddle by 3 pm with the goal of hitting most of the loops before dark. We rode Rustlers, Mary's, Steve's, Lions, Troybuilt and Mack Ridge and were back to the car a little after 8pm. 30+ miles total, 90% singletrack. These trails have a mix of pretty much everything. Slickrock, broken slickrock, ledges, switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, big ring swoopy hardpack, exposed sideslopes, tricky rock moves with a few crazy hairball technical sections. Basically MTB nirvana. We burned thousands of calories, ate thousands of calories and left it all on the trail. Drove back to a rowdy Mexican cantina in Fruita for some crazy good burritos, got back to camp around ten and crashed hard. Most of the pictures you'll need to click on to blow up so you can get the full effect of the singletrack.

Fruita Bound

We're leaving bright and early tomorrow AM for three days in Fruita. We'll be riding some of

this

and this

and this

drinking some recovery drink

We'll also be doing this

So I wont be able to blog about it til we get back Monday night. I cant wait for tomorrow!

Sherwood Spills

Sherwood Hills isn't going to happen for us this year. Rhonda really liked the course and did well last year and I kinda like it as well. The problem was the course doesn't really like me. Since I am 6'7" I would consider myself a vertically challenged cyclist. Sherwood Hills is not for the vertically challenged. I crashed more in the Sherwood race last year than I did on every other road and MTB ride I did all put together. That's a lot of crashing. I came around blind corners and clipped low hanging branches with my helmet knocking me off the trail and into the bushes. I took a couple corners a little too wide at speed and got my elbow caught on some brush, again throwing me off the trail and into the weeds. My favorite crash was bombing down the singletrack between tightly spaced trees and smacking my shoulder into a tree limb that most people could ride under. This limb almost dislocated my shoulder and yet again threw me off my bike and into the weeks. Add all that to the long drive and early start time for Rhonda and it equals us skipping Sherwood. It's probably better for the trail to keep me off it anyway.

Delayed props to ICup and Kuhl

In my post about the 5-mile race last saturday I neglected to mention one of the coolest things about the event. They had a lucky number seven swag giveaway sponsered by Kuhl clothing where anybody who placed 7th in their catagory won a prize. I was 7th in SM 30-34 so when they anounced the winners in my catagory they called me up to collect my prize. There was a large table of swag and of course my eyes were at first drawn to the bike stuff. There were some nice gloves, tools and pumps but they were all things that I didn't really need so I moved over to the clothing pile. As I was digging through the clothing pile I found this gem. I've wanted a nice Merino Wool sweater for years but was never willing to pay the $100+ price tag. How sweet is that! Thank you very much Kuhl Clothing and Intermountain cup. I've already worn the sweater twice.

The 2.3 Million Dollar MTB Trail

I rode the newly legal $2.3 Million BST between Bear Creek and Willow Park last night. From a MTB perspective what a colossal waste of money. I would rate that section of trail as one of the worst in the valley if not the worst. It is poorly built with multiple unsustainable steep sections that are eroding as fast as the cheap waterbars that were installed can wash away. It seemed like I ended up walking at least 25% of the trail. From an open space perspective I can hesitantly agree with the purchase. It sounded like the other option Sandy City was pursuing was to build an access road and allowing the property owner to develop part of the property (4-5 trophy homes) in exchange for allowing public access to the BST. It is a pretty piece of property and a nice addition to Willow Park. The fact that it is now protected for eternity is probably worth the $2.3 million. My main problem with the purchase is that if the county wanted that property for an oil or gas line they would have just claimed it via eminent domain but since they wanted it for access to public trail (a far more valuable and responsible use of the land) they had to pay out the ass for it.

Creative Control

Rhonda wanted more creative input in my blog. I tried to explain that since it was my blog I had sole executive producer rights. She flashed me the wedding ring and I caved. She wanted two things. The first was more cats, a la Fox.

Revolutionary Kitty

The other thing she wanted was more stories about her, so here goes. Rhonda rode in Corner Canyon last night with Jolene and Tasha. She wasn't sure exactly what trails since she likes to just hammer along and enjoy the scenery but she knows it involved some singletrack, a bit of dirt road, clarks trail, more singletrack, crossing some pavement, a fun twisty singletrack through a neighborhood and a lot of chatting. Sounds like good times to me.

More Draper Explorations

Rhonda and I hooked up with Ian on Sunday so he could lead us on some further explorations of the Draper trail system. We rode from his house in Suncrest and picked up the Suncrest Perimeter trail at the top. Cruised around the southern perimeter of Suncrest and crossed the road over into Hog Hollow. Climbed up to Jacobs ladder, took that and Ghost Falls down to the bottom, climbed back up Clarks and took OHV roads back to his house. Suncrest Perimeter has the potential to be a sweet trail it just needs to see more traffic. It kinda goes from nowhere to nowhere now but as soon as the new Maple Hollow trail is finished Maple Hollow will link up to Suncrest Perimeter and you'll be able to ride a big loop of Maple Hollow, Suncrest, Jacobs Ladder, Ghost Falls and the BST. The next trail work day for Maple Hollow is 5-17 so hopefully the trail will be finished this summer and the big loop will be ready it time for fall riding.

Six in the front, six behind

That was how it all panned out at 5-Mile on Saturday and I'm pretty happy with it. I met my main goal for the race which was a sub 2 hour time and as an added bonus I wasn't DFL. The pace at the start was fast but not crazy fast. The group was strung out in a line (other than the leader who was gone) for the first few miles and I just hung in the back getting a nice rythm going. Things got messy about three miles in when we started passing the Expert girls and the lead group of the SM 35-39 caught us at about the same time. In the comotion I lost my group and pretty much never saw any of them again. Climbed the hike a bike, enjoyed the view from the top and headed down. Narrowly avoided a UMB'er who ate it on the turn at the bottom of the single track and then took a pull from him across the flat when he passed me. Passed a couple scalpels on the DH, on my HT no less;-). I used my DH mantra "keep it together" to great effect. My back got a little tight on the ups and downs across the back half but nothing too bad. Bart lapped me at the top of the final climb so I grabbed his wheel for the last shallow DH mile to the finish. It was slick riding his wheel for that little bit. All I had to do was pedal and follow. No need to worry about my line cause I knew his was the best. Felt good through the feed zone with a 56 minute first lap but was concerned about my energy level since I hadn't fed much on lap one. Was good to go for the first couple miles of lap two and concentrated on getting in some calories. About two miles into lap two my back got a little tight again but not too bad. My main problem was I lost focus on what was going on and my mind started to drift. People began passing me left and right and I didn't seem to care much. The hike a bike woke me up. At the top I stopped for a minute to stretch out my back, refocus and HTFU. Smoked the DH and powered through the back half to finish strong. Ended up 7th out of 16 with a 1:58:41 time. I was pretty happy with my race other than the couple miles of dilly dallying. I made sure to get in all of my pre-race stretching and it paid off as my back was 90% or better all day. My bike is 100% dialed in now and it was spectacular on this course. The 29er hardtail flow is amazing and everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. The course was full of Superfly's, Paragons and all sorts of other 29'ers. Rhonda took the race off but made herself useful by feeding Bob and catching up with the Buzzardess. Now that I got the bike and back dialed in I need to work on feeding properly and keeping my focus for the entire race. A 56 minute first lap was great but a 62 minute 2nd lap is pretty unacceptable. Baby steps.

80 Degrees Tuesday, Snow Wednesday Night

I was wrong, it's not spring. I think I'll head out and look for a Christmas tree before I hop on the trainer tonight.