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.