Back to Planet Earth

First Thurs. night at home in a looooong time campers... you can keep up on all the adventures with the pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/home?tab=mq

Don't drive angry!

Crankworx Colorado Super-D

After my late night, post-Firecracker 50 arrival into Winter Park, I get up bright and early for the Super-D, pull my bike out of the Saunders storage unit, and get my bike ready for racin'. After pre-riding the course and finding the starting location, I know this is going to be a bad day.
On any other day, this would have been a great course for me... a long climb up the fireroad to start, some ripping singletrack descent, and a few tough pedaling sections thrown in. But today, after the 50 the day before, I've got no power, very little motivation, and a bad starting spot.

We get the call to start, run to the bikes, and start mashing up the fireroad. In my depleted state, I'm getting passed by little kids, guys on downhill bikes, people on stretchers, a few snails, and pretty much everybody on the course. After they all blow up in the first few hundred yards, I begin to pass a few people, and put in a tough dig right before the singletrack begins. Immediately, I get stuck behind some guy that won't let me by... follow... ask to get by... follow... anger building.... and then he goes down and takes me with him.

After picking myself up, remounting the steed, and getting back under way, I've lost a few more spots... number plate torn and dragging on the front tire, I work my way back up to the group and hammer past them on the short climb up to 5-points. Finally, I have some room to go fast!


Unfortunately, I was so amped up from the whole ordeal, I accidentally clipped a pedal on a rock, rode the stem for a little while, and crashed... again! Not only that, but the same guy I was stuck behind before was now in front of me again. Damn that guy is slow! I follow him for a little while, and finally he lets me pass.... rock down the 300yd. bypass, through the lower part of the downhill, and through the finish line in 18th out of 39... not the best showing, but still a great race after 2 crashes! Hopefully WP will start doing more of these!!!

Firecracker 50 Baby!!!

Nicole kindly invited me up to stay with her parents in Silverthorne on Tues. night before the race... after a great breakfast, we headed up to the race venue, waited in a huge line, and eventually got through about 20 minutes before the races was supposed to start. After a poor excuse for a warmup, I staged up for the race in Open Men 19-29, right behind the Open Pros. No semi-pro, no expert classes in between... Sweet!

The start for the 50 is by far the most exciting way I've ever started a race. Rolling down Main St. right before the start of the town's 4th of July parade was amazing. Riding at a nice slow pace, high-fiving little kids, and almost completely forgetting about the suffering to come... almost!

The race started with a monster climb up a paved road, then up the old Boreas Pass railroad grade, and finally over to some singletrack. The singletrack was great, had plenty of places to pass, and took us back to more dirt road.... followed by a steep, loose, and rock climb up French Creek and back down, up, and down to the finish. My first lap was tons of fun and although I was trying to take it easy, I still managed a laptime of 2hrs, and 16 minutes.

On the second lap, things were still going well, although at a much slower pace.... After about hour number 3, I just didn't have any power left, and couldn't get my HR up over 140 without some major effort.... no cramping, no puking, just no power...

Rolling in to the finish at 4hrs and 57 minutes, I just barely made my sub-5hr finishing goal. I felt reasonably well after the race, ate some tasty BBQ, and rolled back to my car with dreams of a nice cold shower and some non-chamios-havin' clothing. Get back to the car, reach in by the rear tire to get my keys.... and.... they're not there!!! Great, no keys to be found under the car, on top of the car, in the bushes, or even in the storm drain.


So, I snag a passer-by to use their cell, call the cops, and then proceed to sit around and wait... the cops finally show up, tell me that they didn't receive any lost keys, and give me the numbers of a few local locksmiths... more waiting... and finally the locksmith shows up. Now, I didn't think that I had locked my keys in the car, and we proved it after the locksmith opened the car and no keys were inside... oh well, at least I got to put on some regular clothes.

This was bad... and just got worse. I now need to drive back, get my spare key, drive back up to breck, get my car, and drive back to Winter Park for the Super-D on the following day... no big deal... should only take three or 4 hours total! What could go wrong?

After a quick shower, I borrow Nicole's car, and head to Golden to meet my roommate with the spare key. Done... 1 hour saved by having my roommate come down to Golden and $20 for his trouble. Back onto I-70 and on my way back up to Breck right on schedule... Exit at Frisco, fill up Nicole's car with gas, and immediately get stuck in traffic from people leaving the fireworks display... now what did I do to deserve this?

After finally getting to Breck, picking up Amy D. and heading to my car, I notice a piece of paper under my windshield wiper... I found your keys... call me at Xxx... So, I dial her up, get my keys (which I have not idea why she took them in the first place), put the fuses back in, pack everything up, and head to Winter Park after midnight! Just the way to finish the day after a 5 hr race!!!

Boulder to Winter Park? Why not?

Well, if you stick to the main trails or things you've done before, it shouldn't be that big of a deal.... on the other hand, if you ride for 5 hours then try some new trail, you may end up slogging through the woods, hauling your bike up over rocks, through streams, and over fallen masses of trees.

I'd love to have some pictures to share, but during the process of thrashing my way back to civilization, I managed to lose my two-week-old digital camera somewhere along the way... sweet!

For those interested in repeating the journey, I took the creekpath up to Canyon, up Magnolia Rd., then down to the roundabout in Ned. to re-stock on water. After that, I rode back up past Eldora, on to the Jenny Creek trail (which gets damn rocky), up Rollins Pass Rd., and over the top. Now, if you've made it that far, you may want to just enjoy the easy ride down the road. If your in for some punishment, go down the road for about a mile, and hang a right on the sweet singletrack that is Ranch Creek trail.... Let me know how it goes from there. And look for my damn digital camera while you're making your way down.










Why go all the way around when you can just go right over the top....

Pics and Results

Follow the links to get all the action!

http://picasaweb.google.com/boulderbikes/MountainStatesCup3

http://usacycling.org/results/?permit=2007-1483

The story ends with me putting him in the wall!

Sunday started bright and early at 5:30am in Crested Butte for the always highly anticipated Super-D race. After finding a breakfast joint and chomping down some much-needed calories, I headed up to the resort. Somehow I got the schedule wrong, and my race was scheduled to start at 8:05am, rather than the 9am as I had expected... Uh oh... Not good to race on a full stomach!

After riding the Red Lady express up to the top (same lift I rode past the top of twice in the XC race the day before, and once on Friday) there was no time left for a practice run, so I just did my best to warmup and kill as many mosquitos as possible.

Not wanting to make things easy, the Super-D start at CB began with a 300 yard sprint to our bikes, near 11,000ft, wearing bike shoes... I had a horrible run with pancakes and hash browns sloshing in my gut, and got started on the bike somewhere around 10th place. Not having pre-ridden the course, I knew this was going to get interesting. The dust was immediate and THICK! I had planned to pass a few cats on the open ski run at the start, but I could barely see the trail, much less whatever obstacles lay in wait out on the open ski run.

After sucking down a few pounds of dust, we reached the first major peadaling section of the course. I put down some hate and managed to get past about 5-6 guys in a short 300 yard section, then chased onto the back of a group of 3 for the next singletrack section. Passing was impossible (or at least very very difficult) through the Aspen grove, so I was forced to sit on and eat more dust. Back onto the fire road, I passed one more guy and set off chasing the next, who I caught in short order climbing the next steep littl rise.... and now comes the exciting part!

Add in a monster cloud of dust... then let me know where you'd like to pass. Is that a huge rock in there?

Since this was the last real passing opportunity, I put in a savage 4MPH attack on the uphill side of racer-X. Not wanting to cede the position so close to the end of the race, racer-X started to get frisky and got to throwing some elbows my way. Now, normally I try to race people contact-free and respect their space, but this guy crossed the line with that elbow crap... and I was forced to defend myself... Lucky for me, I've played this game before and took the position. Racer-X hit the deck, and let out the all-too-familiar grunt of getting the his wind knocked out when he hit the turf. Sorry dude... I was faster!

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful to the finish. Since my running at the start was sooooo terrible, I felt that I had finished mid-pack somewhere and was just happy with how many people I passed. Well, turns out that I passed enough people to finish 2nd. Sweet!

Mountain States Cup #3 - Crested Butte

Well, the A4 is still under the knife, so I threw down and rented a manly PT Cruiser for the trip down to Crested Butte on Friday morning... Since I've been down HWY 285 way too many times, I decided to take I-70 out through Copper Mtn. and down through Leavdville. Much to my suprise, the route I decided to take was the same route the Ride the Rockies group was on. Although seeing several thousand cyclists is pretty cool, it got a bit old to drive so slow and constantly pull over to the side of the road and stop... Oh well, at least they were riding their bikes! Once past that mess, I rolled down into Buena Vista, and up over the imposing Cottonwood Pass.

The XC race on Saturday was brutal to say the least. 12.5 miles and about 2,000 of feet climbing per lap, with 2 laps slated for this cat. I had a bit of a slow start, but managed to come into my own on the first big climb and pass almost everyone in my class, all the women in the expert class, some single-speeders, and a few unlucky beginners. About half-way through the second lap, the baggy-short wearing, 575-riding, guy that beat me in the Angel Fire race came riding past. I hung on his wheel, drafted through the flat stuff, and passed him back before the next singletrack section. Well, as I had gathered from the previous race, this guy is fast and he quickly put on another attack to pass me, and three other straggling expert-class riders. I tried to hang on, but he was just gone.... and I came in 27 seconds back after chasing him for an additional 20-minutes or so. Somehow a guy managed to get off the front and stomped us both by 2 minutes... Oh well, 3rd ain't so bad, especially after riding flat-out for almost two hours.

Amazing scenery pics to come...

Wed. Night Boulder Short Track: Round 2

Ride it! and Brooksy rocked the sunny/hot/dust filled Boulder short track race on Wed. and came away with lungs full of dust, and less skin than they started with. Ride it! started the evening off by thrashing around in the "B" race (see heart rate data!) to a probable top-15 finish, and Brooksy rode to a solid 2nd place in the "C" race after a good dust plume inducing crash mid-way in the race... Fun indeed!

24 Hour Adventure Extreme in Durango

A Thursday new-bike build with a 10pm departure put our arrival at Durango Mountain Resort (Purgatory) just a bit behind schedule and we didn't end up getting to bed until about 5:30am on Friday morning. Friday morning was amazing and we put in a quick ride to make sure that the literally just built bikes were up to the task... follow that with a quick nap.. and you're ready to go 24 hour adventure racing.

Luckily, I was able to keep busy by replacing chains, watching chipmunks, searching for lost racers on my mid-race bike ride, driving, chatting with other support crews, and most importantly... making the guy who ruined my morning tell me to go away after a bout of caffeine fueled agression on my part.

Brooks and Tiff had a great race, loved their new bikes, and didn't accidentally kill any critters during their slog through the wilderness! More sleep please!!!

Full set of images are at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boulderbikes/200724HourAdventureExtreme

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.durangomountainresort.com/assets/images/_trailmap/summertrailmap.pdf

1st Expert Class Race

Nick T. (buddy from work) and I ventured up to the Winter Park hill climb early Saturday morning to test our climbing legs against the unreasonably fast CO locals. Nick stomped the field by about two minutes and I came in about 4 minutes after him to take 6th! Not too bad for my first expert race, but I didn't quite make my goal of beating the 40-minute mark... Guess I'll just have to try again next year!!!

http://www.epicsingletrack.com/default.asp?page=/Results2007/Race1/M2C2.html

Looks like a winner!

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1287

You can drop it (from 5ft), dunk it (to 33ft), freeze it (-10°C/14°F) or even try to crush it (up to 220lbf), and it will still take amazing photos. We shall see!

This is only a test...

First blog entry... 6/6/07