Rolling big wheels across the land

Pimp my Chariot

2012-01-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

So bad it even has tread on the sidewalls.

Tectonic Tribulation

2012-01-23T12:32:00.001-07:00

Riding in January? You betcha.

Time for a celebration. Enjoy the Blarney Stone, sharpen your boots, and bludgeon your eye.

And speaking of a good bludgeoning, we got great news on the Durango Double. October 6/7, 2012 - a 50k trail race one day, and a road marathon the next. Race website here. Man the local calendar is looking awesome this year.

The Big Toe

2012-01-19T22:31:00.001-07:00

Sgt. Hulka is taking a pounding from the increase in running. I'm thinking I may lose the nail, and apparently that is normal. 64 miles last week, and 36 already this week - I'm hoping to break 60 again if the toe wants to come along and not act up. Lighten up Francis! If not the cross bike is ready to lead me to adventure. But the difference between going for a run vs. a ride in the wintertime is huge, given the extra clothing, shoe covers, helmet warmers, etc. I can take off so quickly for a run, and this time of year it seems to take forever for me to get ready for a ride - and sometimes I return back to the house either too warm or too cold. Running has it's place and I'm liking it this winter in lieu of the skiing.

We finally got some snow this week, and I spent a good hour clearing that up on Monday. But it is all melting now, and should be gone in town soon. The muddy trails got a nice layer over them and the icy ones got some traction, so I ran over at Animas and all around the college. I like the snow trail running, but it is slower than pavement as you have to pay attention to where you plant your feet. Perhaps we will get enough snow to open up Hillcrest for some skiing, and they did groom a track early this week, but grass shows through some of now.

Rest Day

2012-01-14T19:42:00.002-07:00

Well it was supposed to be at least, but with weather like this sometimes you have to just say eff it. I thought about riding, but that didn't pique my interest, so instead, I put on my running shoes and loaded up the Dakine pack and then took off on a route unknown. Before I knew it I was headed out on Junction with thought of going over to Fall Creek.

Steve rolled up on his cross bike with plans for a similar ride and we chatted for a bit. I thought about just turning around at the CT/Falls Creek junction, but just kept running. When I saw the Falls Creek single track, I couldn't stop here either, so on I went.

I took the fun and narrow singletrack down to the Zink Waterfall Trail or whatever it is called. There was some ice, but it was cool to be on that trail in January. When it merged into the old road things got better and no ice at all.

So from here a few more miles back into town, over to 32nd street and man I was tired. So I headed over to Bread and got a coffee cake and some coffee. Man that hit the spot. From here it was onto Bread Express and a run back home. A nice 19-miler to close out the week.

I'm afraid to say it, because I do like the snow - but this is turning into an awesome January. I guess enjoy it before the dry summer comes.

Big Friday Run

2012-01-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Big Friday run this week was out to Edgemont via Bread Express and the dirt shoulder of Florida Road. I should have ran around Edgemont, but ran through it to Rim Ridge road, which is really singletrack, not road. The lower part was dry, but the upper was a disaster as the packed down snow that has gone through a melt/freeze cycle that turned it into an ice skating rink with a 30-degree incline. I sat on my heels and slide down, but still almost tipped over.

Then in was on the paved road that goes over to Elmores corner, but I turned at the county road that eventually runs into Horse Gulch road. This was perfect for running, and I took that back all the way into town. Back up Gueglein/South College and a nice 14-mile loop.

It is so cool to have what seems like limitless option right out the front door. The Element has only been driven one time since the trip down to Otero/Cedro in November, and the Escape has not left the city limits since then either. I've only left town via my feet or Moots cross bike. Cool huh?

People are riding singletrack here in town, and I've seen a few mountain bikers out. I've debated giving it a try, but it is best right now to continue the long running. Forcing a mountain bike ride now either means expending gasoline, wasting drive time, or if in town doing repeated routes, out-and backs, and you are still subject to intermittent mud bogs. The cross riding is another story, and it has a serious pull to me right now - but I know better (or at least I pretend to) as it is very easy to get burned out on riding by May piling the miles up on lonely dirt roads all winter.

I got an invite to head down to Chama for an xc-ski race, but it looks like this year I may not ski once if conditions continue. However, I did get wind of the Sneffels Half-Loop Race in March, and wow, this sounds amazing! I made the decision last season to forgo a pursuit of Randonee skiing, and this years conditions only reinforced that - but it looks like they open this course to classic nordic skiers as well. Although the 35-miles, 6600-ft of climbing sounds epic - I'm not sure the 9k of descent on classic nordic skis is too smart of a decision. I'm sure I've attempted dumber thing though. You can bet the farm on that one.

Run Forest, run!

2012-01-10T12:12:00.001-07:00

A big congrats to my alma mater. (again)

Missionary Run

2012-01-07T12:45:00.001-07:00

Jeni and I have been covering for one another with the new addition in the household, and both of us have been able to have a pretty effective and fun exercise routine. When Friday came around it was Jeni's rest day, and I weighed driving to Cortez to ride Phil's World or doing a big run in town.

The run won out, and it turned out to be quite epic.

I had recently wanted to run up to the top of Missionary Ridge from my house, and this side of the ridge looked clear enough. So I took off down the street and descended Bread Express to Florida Road and ran that out to the Pioneer Trail.

Pioneer was a great shape and quite a few people have been on it recently. From here it was onto Silver Ridge Road, FR 071 right into the USFS land. Once past the gate the normally closed road had a semi-groomed snow path - someone took an ATV and dragged a snow rake behind or it looked like it at least. This made the running really easy as I did not punch through the snow, and there were some other runners up there as well. From there, I took the veer off to Missionary Ridge Trail, which had a nice path cut in from snowshoes and hikers.

When I got to Haflin Creek Trail, it was clear that no one yet had taken the upper part of the trail. However, I knew that people hiked from the bottom, so eventully I would find a beaten path.

The trail descends about 2500-ft vertical and it is usually full of dead fall from the Missionary Ridge Fire. There was a lot of snow post holing at first, which was not bad as it was only upper calf deep. However, I was running in knickers with calves exposed so it stung. The dead fall was pretty bad so I ran on logs, climbed over them where possible, etc.

Haflin was much longer than I remembered, or at least the post holing and tree climbing slowed things down. The middle part was deep in the canyon and out of the sun so it had a lot of snow and was a bit cool. Eventually I made it back into the warm sun, albeit at near sunset. The red earth section of this trail is so pretty.

This photo shows the contrast of sunny side vs. shady side.

From here I had to run back to town on CR 250 and then up North College. The sunlight disappeared and fortunately the full moon popped out to guide me home. I started this one a tad too late, but the adventure turned out to be worth it. The running loop ended up being a nice 20-mile, 3600-ft of climbing route. Jeni cooked some awesome pizza and along with some New Belgium beer this capped a nice day.

The dry winter has yielded some amazing adventures right out the front door. We were in the 50s all week with nothing but sunshine. Lets hope though we get some moisture sometime, because the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire was the result of a very dry winter.

Global Warming is Grand

2012-01-04T21:53:00.003-07:00

Just two years ago on nearly the same day, Jeni and I were shoveling this in epic proportions.

Today I took off from my house (up on the mesa off in the distance of the photo below) and ran over through town and climbed Animas peak. The lower trails were dry, and the BLM have not shut down the upper trails as they usually do when the Elk make it their winter home.

Animas is my go to mountain bike ride, and the plan here was to just run through Sailing Hawks, but when I saw the upper trails were open, I did not hesitate. When the opportunity is there for an epic, you take it - and make the rest of the day conform.

My prediction for this year is that we will get late snows, very late snows - like the big one we had last May. So if that is in the future, hit the trails and don't look back. Rumors are abound that Phils World is dry, and all of Farmington/Aztec. Not sure if I am willing to drive just to ride a mountain bike right now, when I can hit the cross bike and find epic dirt roads, or run on some fun singletrack all from the doorstep.

The run up to the top of Animas and back ended up being 15-miles and 2600-ft of climbing. I was fortunate that I actually packed water and food this time, as I usually run without either. It made a big difference and the thought of running up on Raiders after this flashed through my brain. Enduro junkies always think of the next hill.

The road ahead

2012-01-02T14:05:00.003-07:00

2011 has reached it's conclusion and what a year it has been. Jeni and I became parents after nearly 20 years of marriage and we are moving forward with that challenge. Our little daughter is a bundle of joy and it is amazing at how many friends have had their first all within a few months of this. Loads of house chores have been either completed, identified for future projects, or outright ignored because sometimes it's better to leave trouble alone.

I traveled far and wide for both work and also for adventure and it got to a point to where I just didn't want to leave town any more. I was able to complete my first ever xc-ski marathons in Steamboat Springs and also Crested Butte, with Crested Butte being a challenging, but ultimately fun endeavor skiing right through the alley ways in town. Mountain bike season rolled around and I just needed a break from multi-lap races the years prior, so I set out to hit as many 100-milers as I could - and that got me into my first Bailey 100 and also High Cascades 100 with my first ever trip to Bend. I went to Breckenridge for my 6th showing there, and made my 5th visit at Vapor Trail 125. The Durango Dirty Century was another highlight as the crowds made it all the more fun even with the snow challenge. Finally, I was able to race in the Sage Burner 25k, Lead King 25k, and ultimately Moab Trail Marathon for running events, completing my first ever running marathon in the process.

What I learned this year was that I do enjoy the race events, regardless of the format - be it skiing, running, or cycling. Conversely, I did not enjoy the travel, and the 18-hour drive Bend (one-way) overshadowed what fun I should have retained from the adventure.

The plan is set for 2012, with all mountain bike races in Colorado, but the running ones extended to nearby Moab. Jeni and I have an interesting year coming up both with the family and professional challenges as additional items to juggle. Can't wait to get started!

Ride on

2012-01-01T11:21:00.003-07:00

Got the cross bike ride in and the hit the ridge last day of the year for an epic run. Decided to go up the usual skyline, full ridge run, and then down into town and back up Florida and North college. A bit muddy in spots, and lots of ice on skyline (should have brought a pack and put in the trax spikes), but once up on top the views were amazing.

It back to the cross bike again, and even though it's mostly pavement, it just feels better than the road machine right now. Keep on rolling on down the line.

9 Days Down

2011-12-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Whew that head cold put me down a while, but it did help out Jeni as she got plenty of time to herself this last week. I got back into a weight lifting routine - and started with the legs, and then it hurt to walk for a while. Well it still does actually. The running started back up and today i'm going to try for a bike ride. I would almost rather run just to save time, but I do want to get out on the wheels once before the year ends.

Apparently getting a head cold after your wife gives birth is the trendy thing to do, as our friend Erik has been laid up as well after Alice gave birth. I do not suggest this for others though. Actually though, birthing room No.3 at Mercy is where we both had our kids and I'm guessing Erik and I both picked it up in that there room - even with all the germ killing gels, masks, etc.

I'm a bit bummed the head cold kept me off of the ridge with all of this awesome weather - it is such a blast running up there. If there is more snow the ridge opens, when it slowly melts it exposes mud patches of slick peanut butter like caliche soil. It may not look like it in the picture, but it is an 800-ft climb up to the top of the ridge, then about a 5 mile run up there. Throw in the college and it gives me a great 10 miles loop. If i get up in time before the thaw, I should be able to run this over the weekend. I know some people don't mind the mud running, but I just see it as poor trail etiquette.

December Singletrack

2011-12-25T15:15:00.001-07:00

I've been running more than biking this winter, and thus far the snowfall has been very limited here in Durango as the storms have gone either to the North or South of us. However since we are nearly 7k elevation, the temperature does get quite cold at night and that means what snow we do have only has a short window each day to melt. The good news for me is that I just have not found the Jones to go Nordic skiing, and the conditions have made running right out the front door perfect.

Last week, I was able to run my "go-to" route up Skyline and all the way across Raiders Ridge as the snow has been packed down very nicely. I made first tracks in the snow on Extended Raiders and it was actually powder snow up there, but only a few inches. The rock hazards were covered and there were some areas that I had to walk, but getting a trail run this late in the year is golden.

I ran myself into the ground as I was doing 11-12 miles a day and the idea was that with Jai Li being born at the end of my week running block, I would then take some rest days as we got acquainted on being parents for the first time. What I did not plan for though was picking up a nasty head cold while at the hospital.

So it has been a tough week for me trying to shake this head cold, but a good one for Jeni as she has been able to get her exercise Jones on every day since the delivery. She has hit the Rec Center and has now started running herself. This is supposed to be a cloud free and sunshine week coming up, so I'm hoping to get back out there myself.

Our friend Alice made the local newspaper as she ran all the way through her pregnancy. Check out the story here. This town is chock full of athletes with amazing stories.

I'm also continuing with the free online courses at M.I.T., and this week started going through the Ordinary Differential Equations class. It is really cool that you can view and perform entire courses via online video, homework, exams, etc. I'm using this as a refresher as this undergrad course was needed years ago for me, and I wish to gain this knowledge plus some others back. What I have noticed thus far regarding the M.I.T. courses is what one would expect - the material is not harder or any different than when I took the course, but the M.I.T. students are understandably more prepared for the course than my experience. The professor just does not have to go step by step through equations in order to teach the lowest-common-denominator student in the class (lucky for me, as i can stop the video lecture and work through the problem at my slow speed when needed). I'm usually a very anti-elitist for anything from sports to education to social networking, but there is a reason why this school is so highly rated, and thus far I have been really impressed.

M.I.T. announced last week that they will offer certificates for course completion in the near future, so color me interested. Check this out.

It's a girl!

2011-12-19T12:23:00.001-07:00

Wow, what an amazing experience! We are so happy right now, and welcome the newest addition to the household.

People of the world, Unite!

2011-12-15T10:23:00.002-07:00

In our "free" society the real truth is that nearly everything costs you money. But fear not, the underground movement is here to maintain a civilized society and support the culture of sharing.

For years bands like the Grateful Dead have allowed people to record their concerts and share with others. This has continued on with other bands at The Archive. Download full concerts for free in many different formats -and you might be surprised at the quality for some of these recordings.

For the mountain bike racer the tradition of underground races continues here in the great southwest - with the Colorado Endurance Series and it's siblings in New Mexico and Arizona. But it is not just limited to mountain biking, and the trail running scene is following suit, especially down south in New Mexico where Mounain Trail Series and Albuquerque Fat Ass Series offer up some really interesting routes. Better courses, better challenges, more camaraderie and absolutely no entry fees. People just coming together for endurance exercise and entertainment.

Project Gutenberg provides free books in all types of formats wither for your your sophisticated pad viewer, or just plain old html. Wikipedia as most people know is an online group effort to maintain an all encompassing electronic encyclopedia All it takes to read is access to a computer.

And as you know, this here blog - and links to others are all free and open to the public. Small contributions to the net, but the hit counts do show interest to some.

But lately, I've been spending some time over here at M.I.T. Open Courseware. I've been needing a refresher for some engineering mathematics and was pleasantly surprised to see that one of our countries legendary mathematical geniuses - Dr. Gilbert Strang, among others, has embraced the concept of free education. Complete courses taught at M.I.T. from online streaming videos, to syllabus sheets, homework assignments, and even exams are posted for you to watch, practice and test yourself, all without spending a nickel. One of my favorite texts from my college days was Dr. Strang's graduate text on Linear Algebra - and because of the internet, you can watch a full semesters worth of Dr. Strang actually teach you Linear Algebra all for the price of the electrons your computer uses via the power company.

I started with Dr. Strang's highlights of Calculus refresher course, and what makes that even more amazing is that the textbook - his 1st edition of the book, plus solutions manual, instructor's manual, etc - are all free for download as a supplement to the course. Books + classes for free. Wow! I went through a couple semesters of Calculus in just a couple of days and it brought back a lot of information. Imagine what it can do to a high school or college kid going through this the first time.

And if the price of electrons is too much, then go to your public library and use the public computer. Make sure to enjoy those free roads and sidewalks that got you there as well.

I love Jugs

2011-12-13T17:27:00.002-07:00

Resurrection

2011-12-08T17:47:00.001-07:00

I really thought I would get rid of the Bianchi San Jose when I got the Moots cyclocross bike, but I'm glad I held on to it. Roads turn into a muddy mess when snow melts and the Planet Bike fenders fit this rig so well that I plan to use it as the snow plow again this year.

We got some snow and cold weather over the weekend, but it has abated. I like riding in the warmest temps of the day however, so I either ran on the trails and road, or finally today I went for a ride on the cross-bike - this time the Moots though.

There is still trail to be ridden in town - you just have to hit it in the early AM or wait for things to freeze again for a night ride. Or in the case of all the snow bike riders - hit it whenever. I've seen tracks all over the college from Pugsley tires and I suspect it is my buddy Danny who lives at the base. Looks like a fun machine to ride on that is for sure, and those extra fat tires seem to roll right through the wet caliche here. Those bikes are definitely here to stay and maybe someday I will follow suit. Until then it's a continuation of my tradition to muck through the winter on the Bianchi when there isn't enough snow to ski on. The running is happening more and more frequently than the one-day-a-week plan, but not with all that great of consistency.

Lots of time to play right now, but that is going to end soon. Really soon!

Stolen Goods

2011-12-01T14:12:00.001-07:00

Wow, the last ride of November turned epic, well at least for it being in November. Temps in the high 50s, no clouds in a bluebird sky and awesome single track right from my doorstep! I did the old Iron Horse race route mostly, with Raiders Ridge thrown in for fun at the end and finished with 32-miles and 4000-ft of climbing. It is only the second time I have ridden the South rim all season as I just do not venture down there too often, which is a shame. Bone dry single track everywhere, with the only hazards some packed ice on upper Telegraph and the Anasazi descent.

Temperatures cooled off significantly today, but I will soon leave for another ridge run - albeit with more clothes than yesterday. It could very well be the last ridge run of the year as snow is supposed to come tomorrow.

Good tunes here.

Ride on

2011-11-29T16:39:00.001-07:00

Donger need food!

Whew, the legs are tired but the riding won't stop. With the gift of such great weather the trails in town are open and we are riding them before the first big snow comes and buries them for good.

Ventured over to Sailing Hawks and then Test Tracks and found things all open. Hidden Valley was a trip though as it is in the shade and was very chilly in parts as some ice is packed back in the hills. People have been recreating enough that there is a dirt layer over the ice, so it gives you traction. But when the slope turns super steep you can spin and then slide out!

But got up to Star Wars and hit the descent, which is always fun.

Sailing Hawks was just in great shape and it is so fun back there. Climbers on the rocks, hikers and runners out there, and even a few bikers - all with their best attitude. It's a really cool place to be.

I've been riding the 'race' bike as the 'ride' bike needs a bit of attention on the Crossmax wheel. A nice rock hit the valve stem and bent it beyond repair. Going to try to glue in a valve stem cut from an old inner tube in lieu of paying Mavic for a new stem. Hot glue guns and valve cores cut from tubes have worked wonders on other rims in the household.

Jeni is getting close to the due date, so I had better get my ride on these last few days!

The Return of the Mountain Bike

2011-11-27T15:53:00.001-07:00

I've been a bit more conservative this late season - more so than the last few, and as such I've tried to avoid mud riding. With cooler temperatures, just the slightest bit of moisture stays in the ground around here for days due to the large temperature swings between night-and-day. So I've been running in the Gulch, and even took the cross bike through it a few times.

Saturday left me with some obligations for the day so time was short - but not short enough for a 2-hour run up on the ridge, in the gulch, and around the college. That was enough to convince me to hit the mountain bike on Sunday.

So I hit up Skyline first, which I knew still had moisture - and I hit it when it was frozen. That left a fun tour all over Raider's Ridge.

That is my neighborhood below, and the two inclined mesas are Missionary Ridge to the right and Animas Peak to the left, with Hermosa in the background.

Riding up on Raiders is fun, but I actually prefer to run up there. In fact, there are times I can run up Skyline and clear the whole ridge faster than I can with a mountain bike.

We have a big block of blue-sky days coming and I intend to ride the mountain bike all the way through it. Last few seasons the in town mountain biking has stopped usually by December 7th. We are looking clear all through the week ahead!

I did multiple loops in the gulch which was fine, but then it started to get a bit crowded. Should be fewer people through the week, and I will even head over to Sailing Hawks and Animas when I get the chance.

Good times with temps in the 50s, blue skies and a week of riding ahead!

Although the running on the ridge will be calling as well.

How can I complain, with decisions like that to make?

Crossing the county

2011-11-24T10:08:00.001-07:00

It is time to switch to the cross bike and take advantage of all the lonely dirt roads we have around here. Got to get to those roads before they become iced over from snow and then it is either pavement or waxing ski time.

The magnesium chloride treated roads actually feel smoother than the pavement around here, and you can really fly on the roads.

I also pulled the Campy Record out of mothballs and strung up gears on the road machine. I really enjoy single speed on the road, but the cross bike can cover that and this gives me an option for speed in the valley floor, because sometimes it's just too darn cold to climb and then descend in the winter.

Beautiful and relatively warm weather over the holiday weekend for us, but the ironic thing is that the trails are now a bit wet during the day, and really only good for trail running in my opinion. In fact I've run more the last two weeks than in any other week prior to the 25k or marathon I did this fall. Short concise strides lead to a quicker workout and I still get to enjoy single track.

iBeer App

2011-11-21T10:37:00.001-07:00

A good sign that you have had an active week is when the big Saturday ride comes and you can barely turn a pedal. Such was the case for me, as the week prior had some cross rides, some mountain bike rides and a couple of long trail runs.

I did a quick loop around the college and then went to
the Horse Gulch and kept on the old road over to the backside of Edgemont. The plan was to hit up the Pioneer Trail climb, but my legs told me to forget it, so I went back in town and took the Nature Trail back home.

Jeni told me to stick around for the weekend because there were some parties to go to, so with careful planning I had the dead legs on Saturday. I had entertained the idea of doing a WRIAD solo, but that will have to wait, or I just hit the county roads on the cross bike.

Apparently they do baby showers co-ed now, and we went to one for some friends hosted by a party professional. Since we are in Durango, beer of course was involved - as were time trial races involving strollers.

Beer chugging in baby bottles were another highlight.

I was a spectator for all of this, as I was pretty tired even at the party.

But the body adjusts, and by Sunday A.M. I was greeted with the news that the Tide are back in the hunt for the big game, in addition to a nice little burst of energy. I was also able to get out for a great 2-hour run, back up on the ridge, the college, and the gulch.

A Different Kind

2011-11-17T16:15:00.001-07:00

Awake and fire up The Stones

Head West

And wait for the sun to set

Arise another day, and fire up The Dead

Head uphill

But come down before the sun sets

No Expectations
Just enjoy what you got.

Travelling Durangatangs

2011-11-14T10:28:00.001-07:00

So we made a big day and headed south to Albuquerque. We started at

The County Line and rode both North and South Foothills and then did the Otero-Cedro Loop.

It was surprising to see all of the work done out there and the trails were in great shape, even if they had weird names. This trail really wasn't all (g)nasty with aggression, considering that most of it used to be Tr. 56 or Lawrence Taylor back in the day and was more downhill than meandering over rocks. Whatever the case though, the open portions of Otero certainly do have a lot of more trail available these days.

Otero was in great shape, but when we cut over to Cedro via the picnic table at Oak Flats, things started to get a bit damp and slimy. We ran into some moto riders on the "new" Mahogany, and then up and over at Poker Chip. Because of time limitations we just rode Mighty Mule for the finish and skipped Coyote. Back to town on a fast descent and through a small part of South Foothills before it got dark and then we, unfortunately, had to ride the bike path back to the start. Just an hour more of daylight available and we could have ridden back through the foothills at sunset, which was what I wanted. It's a really cool sight to see when riding through near dark trails over the city lights.

We got a nice 65-mile, 6500-ft of climbing loop, which considering the 10:30AM start worked out well for us.

We made a quick stop for food and then drove back to Colorado. Not the best choice - Filabertos in Bernallilo - but it was fast and no one stole our bikes or car, as we were able to keep an eye on things. Ryan thought Filabertos was world class Mexican food, though.

I popped on a 20t in the rear for this ride and my cog choice turned into a grinding, vibrating mess toward the end. It time to retire this Surly 20t, and it looks like I have another one that is not too far off from retiring as well. Ditto goes for that 21t in the previous post. I may flip the cog around and try it for commuting around town.

Things are looking good with the weather and we might be hitting up WRIAD soon, perhaps later in the week. Trails might be dry enough in town for some running too.

Got to keep the miles up and enjoy the blue sky this week for sure.

Plastic Yield

2011-11-12T04:52:00.001-07:00

My contribution to the field of Plasticity Theory.

Del Sur

2011-11-11T16:05:00.001-07:00

Head downhill: Trails in town are a tad bit moist right now, so it looks like a trip down south is in order.

Moab Trail Marathon 2011

2011-11-07T11:23:00.001-07:00

On a whim, while sitting in Paonia the night before the Lead King 25k Trail Run, I fired up the iPhone and signed up for the Moab Trail Marathon. My reasoning at the time was to commit to getting a running marathon under my belt this year - and not let the Lead King result decide that for me. Fortunately the Lead King was actually a positive running experience so my decision was validated, at least a bit after finishing in Marble.

However, I did not just want to "bag any marathon" and sign up for one of those urban, flat road, everybody gets a medal that tries type of marathon. I wanted something that closely resembled the back country ultra endurance experience like one finds in racing mountain bike 100s or the like. The Moab Trail Marathon, as such delivered this perfectly!

Moab is about 3-hours from Durango, so I decided to stay at home the night before and drive there and back for the race. The plan was to run the marathon, eat at Pasta Jays (and order the Chicken Cacciatore - one of my favorites anywhere - who would believe there is good Italian food in Moab?), and then on the drive home, listen on the radio as my alma mater pounded the LSU Tigers out of the BCS title race. Everything went to plan, except for the Crimson Tide winning, unfortunately. Better luck next year!

The weather took a very nasty turn on Friday night, and when I started up the Ford in the early AM, the wind in Durango just started to pick up. By the time I got to Monticello, UT I was in a full on blizzard. The Satellite Radio played a rather ironic tune.

Snow turned to rain by the time I descended to Moab, and at the start area, we were sent to park in a muddy and goopy mess. A lot of the runners were complaining, and I just had to chuckle at that - remembering the start of the 2009 Vapor Trail 125 where we took off at midnight in a rain storm! This would be a nuisance compared to that experience!

They had a ton of events, with the 26.2-mile marathon the hardest challenge, and then shorter distances, including an obstacle course. There are some good photos and a movie of the course located here. I put on my trusty Showers Pass jacket and wore my old Assos fleece lined bib shorts - with the chamois removed (it cracked 2 years ago, and now this is a nice running bib). We took off around 8:45, as the start was delayed and then we hit this course immediately in a not-so-dry creek bed. Feet wet at the on set. I held with a group of around 8-10 at the front and felt really well as we climbed up to a rocky road, sort of like the rougher parts of White Rim. About 2 miles in it started to rain again, and in some places that was good as the moisture packed down the sand, but in others it made for a muddy, peanut butter like, caliche mess.

You really had to be careful in choosing your line when the road changed camber and direction, because if you tried to plant your foot in the caliche on an incline you would slide ride out, and a few times I thought I might fall over. This would be the case all the way through this, until we hit the Jackson Trail around mile 19 or so. But prior to that, I started to have a real tough day as my bowels decided to explode at mile 4.

I tried to contain it and hope that an outhouse would appear, but finally I ran to a pinyon tree and stripped down as fast as I could (which with the bibs, meant jacket, shirt removal before getting off stirrups). The good news though, that with a massive bowel explosion it does not really take all that much time or effort, to do...ahem, your business. 6 or 7 runners got in front of me, and I got back to running. Here, we picked up singletrack that was about as tough as Troy Built in Fruita - chucky and gnarly - and now the rocks were wet from the rain!

There were sections with ropes on the steep slick rock to hold onto to lower your self, a few slot canyons (never a good idea to run through a slot canyon in a rain storm, but hey we did it). My bowels acted up a few times after this and I had to slow it down due to abdominal cramps and fear of soiling my drawers. Finally we came out and hit a long, flat magnesium chloride treated road and we had a strange out-and-back on a trail that crosses a deep creek about 6 or 7 times. This was only because the deepest creek crossing was declared to dangerous to cross, so they did a last minute course re-route. Needless to say, the shoes got soaked here and running the Hokas full of water is a strange, trippy experience to say the least. We later hit a swamp that was loaded with mud, and has low bush like trees everywhere. I ran this section with a couple of other guys and we joked it was like an episode of The Fugitive - running through a swamp for dear life it seemed. All we needed was the sound of the tracking hounds and perhaps a few gun shots.

Then the big climb of day and it was sadly a disappointment. It was around 1500-ft classic Moab abandoned mining road grade, chucky, gnarly, and scenic. It disappointed in the sense that it was nearly impossible to run on, because it was all caliche - a complete muddy mess. We formed a cow-like trail in the mud - and I really feel sorry for the people who were slower as it had to be even more of a nightmare for them. I felt great on the climb and actually caught and passed a few other racers, but by the time the descent came (a windy, Hartman Rocks like trail down a valley), my bowels acted up again. Drat. I made it through the valley, filled up water at an aid station and then had to drop drawers once again in a dry creek bed. This, fortunately was the last time for me - but my belly had that bloated, pregnant man look for a while.

I got running again, and caught a few that had slid by me, and then we hit a treacherous steep valley that had us on all fours climbing downward. One guy said hey...look at this blood! Somebody was injured bad in front of us, and we followed the blood path down through the rocks for a while. From there it was dry creek bed and then Jackson Trail. I really would have loved to have flown down this, but this came with ~19-miles in my legs, or should I say knees, and that is when the serious pain came for me. I just could not take big steps anymore and the pain was tough to over come - not sharp, but just dull and achy. Here, I got caught by a younger woman and after I let her pass, I decided to just ignore the pain as best I could and use her as my mark. She kept a good pace, and she did really well at the finish too as she won her age group, and was perhaps the 3rd or 4rth woman finisher.

We got back to the finish area, but this was only mile 21, and we had one more loop to do. I took off and quickly realized they saved some of the toughest for last. We hit aluminum ladders, long climbs with rope up hill and then down hill, and with my achy knees I came through the last aid station visibly in pain. The lady there offered me ibuprofen - and my immediate comical thought was....."you guys got ibuprofen!!! I wish I had known that earlier!" I mean getting offered ibuprofen at mile 25 really would just take the pain away at the finish...and NOT during the race. Ha ha, chalk that up to ignorance as I just assumed the race would not give out ibuprofen or any drugs for liability purposes. Lesson learned there! Oh man I could have used that prior to the Jackson Trail though.

The race after this went though the obstacle course, and I like a moron thought we had to run through it. I hit a section where you had to follow strategically placed rocks in a mud pit, two separate wooden lattice things, and then a sign that said you had to run through a tube. But there was no tube! Hmm that is odd. The next station said to grab an egg and about this time I said screw it and ran through the course. I saw a course marshal a bit after this and he said no we were not supposed to run the course - he was heading over to take down the signs. Doh! Oh well, no one caught me and I didn't drop a place in the finish - just lost a minute of time perhaps.

Then we ran through the muddy parking lot and trashed my shoes again. Finally, up a steep hill and I came into the finish line to complete my first running marathon. Whaoo! I asked the lady what was the time, and she said 4:47. I then, very dryly asked her was that the time of day, or the run time? She got it and laughed at my joke and then told me that was my run time. Cool, I figured I was in 6 hour territory as the website even said most people will finish this between 5 and 6 hours.

Sub 5 with a lot of change is a good thing. A bit funny as well, because at the finish, I noticed that I was wearing my shirt inside out, courtesy of the strip down, bowel explosion.

The finish was a bit sparse as there was no food other than collapsed aid stations brought back in. I grabbed a generic cola, talked to some fellow finishers and then went into Pasta Jays for my meal. We had a ticket for a meal at a place called Milts, but it is a coupon and I'll use it some other time.

My feet handled the running well from a pain standpoint, but the big toes continue to take a pounding. Man up, Sgt. Hulka.

I finished this pretty well considering the 2 bowel stops and knee pain: 34th out of 132 finishers. No bowel issues and a pocket full of ibuprofen and perhaps a 4:20 would have been in order. I'll be back again next year for sure to find out!

On the drive back I had time to contemplate the source of my bowel issues and I concluded it was grabbing breakfast with out of the ordinary foods. The night prior, I went over to Bread here in Durango and hoped to buy some muffins, but all they had was Cinnamon & Caramel rolls. I bought those and shoved them in a bag with a purchased Olive Loaf, plus I got a free Ciabotta loaf from them (thanks Rob!). The problem though for me was the sugar on the Cinnamon and Caramel rolls. Jeni and I do not have sugar in the house - we only have the uber-yuppie, no-calorie, sweetener type of stuff - and my Hammer Nutrition products for racing all use complex sugars. I am not a big fan of sweets either, so i take in very little simple sugars. Hammer has a ton of literature on mixing simple and complex sugars during races and all of it says it is bad. The bloated belly, bowel explosion kind - just like I experienced. Perhaps I have even developed a simple sugar intolerance - or just gorged too much immediately prior to the race. Whatever the case and I should know this - never eat out of the ordinary things before a race. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Seems like I always say that.

Ridge Riding

2011-10-30T17:48:00.002-06:00

Hit the in town epic version 156.7.3.9a and it was a blast. The new Truvativ Stylo replacement crank arm was installed without a hitch and the cleats were rotated a bit to try to stop the heel rub. Seems to have worked, but I miss the in board float in the pedals.

As for the ride, strangely enough the trails were actually a bit muddier on the north slopes than they were the two days prior. Temps got down below freezing in the evening, so I can only guess that the contracting soil moved moisture to the surface. With the 60F day temps this thawed pretty quickly. After having a solid Skyline Trail run on Thurs, the first climb of Saturday was a bit slick.

No problem with that though, as it let me know where to ride and what to avoid. After climbing Skyline and riding Raiders, it was over to the Cemetery and Test Tracks with a cruise over to Animas Peak and then Sailing Hawks via Birket.

I ran into Jeni who was hiking up Animas for her fun day in the sun, and then shortly after I ran into my old neighbor, Jen who was speed climbing the trail with two ski poles. She plans to race the Cosmic Randonee Series this year. Cool stuff, and it's something I have interest in, but alas Durango is a bit off the beaten path for that. You really need to live in or near Summit County for that series, or plan on a lot of hotel/ski condo rentals. Jen is such an athlete, I expect she will do really well in this series. I think I'll just stick to XC Skiing this winter as it is cheap, close by and packs a wallop of exercise in such a short time, when daylight hours are low anyway.

After that it was back over to Test Tracks, and then over to the south portion of the Gulch Network. With a nice ride culminating in the Crites climb, and a drop down Telegraph into the meadow and connection via Powerline back home, this was another big day in paradise. Chalk another 50-miles and 7500-ft of climbing. Whew this is routine is getting to be fun and perhaps a bit tiresome as I have had three 20-hour bike/run weeks in a row in the excellent late fall weather.

Jah is not Dead!

2011-10-28T18:58:00.002-06:00

We took a few lumps from the weather this week, but Kennebec did it's job and deflected the snow to the North of us. Trails were dry enough to run on Thursday and ride on Friday. Temps in the 60s, sunny and a lot of good riding in store the next few days. It really is an Octoberfest!

Jah is not Dead.

The end of the creak

2011-10-23T11:21:00.001-06:00

You can tell it is the end of the season when the bike noises start to come. At the begging of the week it was a irksome noise from the front of the bike, and the culprit was two little bolts on the stem that were rubbing on the white power coat.

By midweek, it was from the bottom bracket, and it was indeed a loose bottom bracket. Something about this particular Moots frame allows the bottom brackets to work loose. I've changed the BB 3 times and they still work loose. Since it is a titanium frame, I'm afraid to use anything besides ti-prep, so i will just have to live with this. But, it was annoying to have it come loose during both the Baily 100 and the High Cascades 100 this year.

And by the end of the week, on my big Saturday ride the YBB let me know if was dry and it gave a little rub noise every time it would bob. The cool thing was though I had some excess grease around the Paragon sliders and I used a piece of grass to pull it out and smear what little bit I had on the Ybb. Quieted that thing until the end of the ride.

Durango has been in this perfect weather pattern right now and since it is late October, it means ride every minute you have. Shirt sleeves, no jackets and sunny skies. I got in a nice 52-mile, 7500-ft of climbing mini epic yesterday and in a few, I'll add more to that tally for the weekend. I've got to start running again, but shoot the motivation is hard knowing that with a small change in weather the warm riding season will soon be over.

In other words, ride and ignore the creaks. You can fix them when it's cold.

Monsters

2011-10-21T11:09:00.000-06:00

Be very afraid of the forest lizards, unless you have good tunes in your head.

The big crack

2011-10-17T09:26:00.001-06:00

I have this rub on all my cranks, but the alloy ones withstand it - although they usually lose the anodizing color. Here, the carbon crank wore down and it weakened the crankarm enough that a crack formed. Amazing how the plastic scuff guard on the Sidi shoe did not wear down first - it looks worn, but not as bad as the crank. I may just stop using carbon cranks because I'm not looking to change pedals right now. Too much float in the CB Pedals are a good thing, but this is a downside.

This tune just seems so right.

Round the town

2011-10-16T12:12:00.002-06:00

Great weekend to be in Durango, which seems to be normal middle of October every year, right after the early October wet rains come. A lot of people were headed down to Gallup for the Zuni 100 mountain bike race, but with temps in the 70's, unlimited singletrack from town, and fall colors I had no interest in leaving.

By Saturdays riding, I already had logged nearly 16 hours of exercise this week, with 3 of those covering a couple of 10-mile Raider's Ridge runs, and the rest mountain biking. So the ride Saturday needed to be at a steady endurance, but not race pace.

It turned out to be a nice 50-mile, 6k of climbing adventure in and around town.

And after swinging through Twin Buttes again, I saw that they added still even more new trail! This section was not here last week, but it takes you up to a high point in the network. The trail builder is using a Bobcat and it looks really rough at first, but already a singletrack rut has been burned in on the lower loops. I took this picture on this switchback, because it will be a place I frequent often as it completes the path for me on my "go-to" town to CT loop. I wonder how long it will take for one to not know it was cut mechanically?

Dry fork is looking good, and the Aspens there still hold a few leaves.

But alas, the bike finally spoke up and told me that I have been riding it too hard. I punctured the front tire late in the ride while trying to go through Sailing Hawks back in town, and then I remembered that it had been a while since I set this tire up for No Tubes. Doh, all of the sealant had dried up and it would not seal itself!

So I pulled out the spare tube and tried to pump air, but the bike pump was broken. It has only sat on the frame for a couple of years and not been used, so it took a while to see that a threaded stop had backed out and got lodged into the upper shaft. A bit of fishing and then I was able to repair. Inflate the tube, pop the wheel back on the bike and about the time I started to put things back together I noticed a big crack in my carbon Truvativ crank arm!

I will have to take a picture of that crankarm - but it is no fault of Truvativ. I am actually the third owner on that one as it started with Cammeron Brennan and made it to Lenny Goodell, who traded it to me when I sold him the Specialized Carbon bike frame. The crank is reflective of my sloppy pedaling and use of Crank Brothers pedals which allow a ton of float. My heal on the non-drive side worn down a good chuck of the carbon and the crack formed there where that section had weakened. I like the Truvativ carnk because of the outboard bearing BB-cups, but I do have a new Crank Brothers ISIS BB and a nice Middleburn crank in the parts bin that will go on the bike to replace this. That is unless I can score a non-driveside Truvativ 175mm crank somewhere.

This is nice shot of Animas Peak, from the eastern edge of Log Chutes.

So with tired legs, and bike repairs to make, I'll spend the afternoon in the garage. Weather looks to hold through the week, so I can't wait to get back out there.

Fall Returns

2011-10-11T12:34:00.003-06:00

After "weathering" a bit of heavy rain fall and snow in town, it is back to blue skies and great temps in and around town. Monday afternoon, I climbed up Animas Peak and then rode through Sailing Hawks and onver the Gudy's/CT.

I always like this view of both Falls Creek and the Hermosa Valley. Hermosa Trail itself looks good to go, so perhaps a trip there next weekend is in store.

Off the beaten path and if you know where this is, then you know your trails in Durango well.

I took an alternative route back through Twin Buttes and found this old mining structure. Looks like a head house, as there were two big "buckets" - one on either side of a pulley system. Did it work as simple as loading up one bucket to bring up the other? I can't see that, because that a lot of extra work. Maybe one for ore, the other for people? Dunno.

Responsibilities are piling up because the itch to get outside is tremendous. In fact it's getting close to todays run time!

New Stuff

2011-10-09T21:28:00.003-06:00

With a long week full of moisture, I was a bit surprised at the dirt riding available for the weekend. 11 hours of dirt time in the 2 days was quite a gift, as I had visions of road biking and making a trip to Moab. The trails sucked up the rain and snow and packed down really nice, so it was on the mountain bike I rode.

I checked out our newest network of trails - Twin Buttes, which will be in the routine as it is on my way from town over to Lightner Creek. Danny had ridden here before so he was my guide on Saturday.

They connect some old roads with loads of new cut trails. The new cut trails were made with a bobcat so it will take some time for true single track to set in, but its a start and amazing how they cut a NETWORK, not just a trail so fast. On it's own, Twin Buttes offers up a good 90 minutes of riding, and that is something we just got added to our inventory.

They put in some cool bridges too.

Then it was onto a new-to-us route we have been inspecting to the Texas Mine. Loads of old homesteads out here.

That peak holds the mine, but I do not think we can make it this year - perhaps next.

Cows and ranchers cut the lower part, but most of the upper is primitive single track and it rides very well, and in fact parallels the CT mostly up to High Point.

Then we ran into the REAL LIZARD HEAD.

Cool cow pastures and hunting camps along the way.

And then we descended due to time and hooked up on the upper section of Dry Fork and orad the CT back into town. I did a solo route somewhat similar on Sunday, but was able to hook up the college network, test tracks, twin buttes, dry fork-CT, Sailing Hawks, and back to test tracks at Hidden Valley and back up the mesa. October, like June is the month to ride local. This town rocks!

CB Classic 2011

2011-10-04T19:57:00.002-06:00

Wow, what an AWESOME day on the bike for the 8th Annual Crested Butte Classic! Three loops from town as usual, but this year the Dyke Loop first and the Deer last, which in my opinion made it much harder. The totals came to 96.23-miles and 12,033-ft of climbing. However that did include some extra miles as I accidentally climbed Canal and Strand Bonus in lieu of just climbing Strand - should have paid better attention to the directions! Finished at 10:09, 4.5-minutes slower than last year, which considering the wrong turn and some map reading time, I'd say the sub 10 day was in the cards if my head had been screwed on better. I ran the Divinity Gearing, but would recommend Divinity + 1 for next year as my buddy Danny Powers ran and ended up first singlespeeder after he dropped me on the steep last Deer Creek loop. I ended up 16th overall, and 2nd SSer, so I'm happy - but will try again next year for that sub 10-hour time for sure.

Thanks to Dave Ochs, Dan Loftus and the Brick Oven, Jason Stubbe and his awesome support and a whole slew of others out there making the CB Classic the best 100-miler out there right next to my DDC. ;-) And neither cost a nickel!

Check out the awesome video and story by Chris Miller at Mountain Flyer: (Thanks to Chris for the photo above as well - that is me in our European Team kit and USA Team vest.)

This is the absolute best of Grass Roots Racing......it's only growing and the freebies guarantee the best return on investment.

Ripsnorter

2011-09-29T14:41:00.001-06:00

The cross bike has been brought down off the hook and it is now back in the rotation. After getting a really bed head cold and being laid up, I finally got out on the bike and took it for a spin.

I went over to Lightner Creek and explored a road I had been wanting to check out, as the maps showed a route via an old forest road that would lead me over to the Dry Fork Trail. On the way there, I had to go through this old homestead.

I could not tell if it was an old ghost town, but given the number of structures here, it certainly had several families on site.

The really cool thing though, was finding the old leaning wheel grader on site. These were originally pulled behind horses and the later tractors. The operator would stand on a very small and obviously dangerous platform and guide the blade direction with the wheels above. I'm sure many a farm hand lost a leg or two with this thing.

I'm guessing the "Ripsnorter" alludes to the horses "snorting" while pulling this thing, and the leaning wheel "ripping" the land. Hence "Ripsnorter" - but that is just a guess. Either that, or there is a really good "fart joke" residing in the name somewhere.

After passing through, the road continued back from state park land to USFS land and I popped right out where I expected to on the Dry Fork Trail. The cross bike is fun for stuff like this, but a true monster cross bike would be supreme.

Hope to get out again today.

Ride Local

2011-09-25T11:14:00.000-06:00

It's a tough decision - go up in the mountains and see the fall colors, or take advantage of perfect weather and go back to the in-town epics. The last couple of days, I decided to just go local and stay in town.

The trails are buff, except a few spots where the rains from a week ago put in some tough placed ruts. With the riders we have here in town, those ruts will be burned out in a couple of weeks if not sooner.

A buddy was in town so I gave him a tour, and we ran into some old friends and some new friends. This time of year is so different than the rest of the season, where the riders - whether they race or just recreate - tend to stop and talk to one another. The early and middle parts of the season we all seem to put nose to stem, and wave others and skip the chit-chat. Lazy autumn days indeed.

Got home and Jeni and I had a nice visit from Sue, an old friend that now lives in Portland. The next evening, we had another friend in town and got to see her daughter all grown up. Times flies by!

I hope I can enjoy the following week though, I awoke with a head cold and want this to clear fast. Sure would suck to have it drag on in the middle of September!

Lead King Loop 25K 2011

2011-09-19T14:27:00.001-06:00

I entered a running race this last weekend, called the Lead King Loop 25k, held in Marble, CO. As a coincidence, a couple of years back, before I had heard of this race, I actually biked the loop when returning from a business trip to Aspen - and I was surprised to ride through a ghost town and see an amazing old mill - which turned out is one of the most famous historical relics in all of Colorado.

Much to my surprise, the race turned out to be the USA Track & Field state championships for 25k distance runners. Cool, so this meant the race had a lot of the states top runners on hand.

Like the weekend prior, I left Durango a midst a rainstorm, only this time I ended up going through snow at the northern passes! However, as I descended down to Ridgway, the skies cleared up and it appeared to be a bit drier than in the La Platas. That nice weather would hold through the entire weekend.

The plan was to stay over night in the small town of Paonia and then drive over McClure Pass and drop into Marble the following morning for the race for the 8:30-AM start. Paonia ended up being pretty cool, and I found the local micro-brewery - Revolution Brewing. The brewery is located in an old house, and they had a really nice Colorado Red Ale, which is made with all Colorado ingredients. I decided to carbo-load so I had four beers, including their IPA. ;-)

I struck up a conversation with the owner about a bottle of beer on his shelf. He told me that Revolution is actually the third ever micro-brewery in Paonia, and the bottle shown below is from their first one - Fire Mountain. This was bottled in 1979 - and has never been opened. So much for Samuel Adams and their "we were first" claims like Gary Fisher and mountain bikes, eh?

Back in 1979, I believe I was in Greeley, CO and doing the roller disco thing, drinking "suicide sodas," and actually working my first job as a paper delivery boy on a bike furnished by the Greeley Tribune. I only got the job because my buddy Jeff Vargas got sick of delivering the papers and gave it to me. (For the record, I didn't last long - there were too many complaints about newspapers ending up on rooftops). Jeff and I later broke the bike frame doing parking lot jumps, BTW. Wow, that was a long time ago!

The race morning was chilly, with a 35F start. But since the route immediately took us up mountain - with a 3k climb right off the bat I just wore shorts, a shirt, arm warmers and thin fleece gloves. I also was fortunate enough to have my car parked about 75-ft from the start line so any last minute decisions were easy to make on the clothing. I knew the course would be very chunky and gnarly as I remembered a ton of rocks from the mountain bike ride a few years back, so I wore the Hoka One Ones I bought from Barb, and it was a great choice. I am NOT a runner, I just pretend to be one as I really only run 1 day a week, and ride a bike on four or five of the others days. The Hokas have a ridiculous wide and spongy base that allows me to run a course like as someone with cardio fitness and muscle strength - but completely inadequate joint strength required of a runner. It is amazing - and I cannot stress this enough how awesome the shoe was for this. This shoe compensates for lack of joint strength in my opinion.

We took off and I settled into the ~ 3rd group of runners. There were a few in the group that were pushing it hard and as we climbed they would drop out. A few people speed walked the steep sections, but I made it a point to run everything. My only limitation was tight Achilles tendons, especially my left leg. After tearing the right Achilles early last season (while biking in the Dawn til Dusk 12-hour race), I did my best to run on the balls of my feet, and take very short steps. If I can continue to get these tendons loosened up, I should be able to take bigger steps and move up faster for steep uphills, as breathing or fitness was not the issue. That said, I was positive in the climb as I passed more than passed me. The big descent would be my real test here, as the Burner 25K run last May proved that I had no business hanging out with runners on the descents due to the joint strength.

The top of the climb is around 11k, and it is stunning beautiful. We abut US Wilderness for a while and the ring of peaks were all snow packed. There was one runner in front of me who I had followed up the climb, but could never quite pass him, so I set him as my mark on the downhills and I was successful there in doing so. The downhill started out gentle and then got ridiculously steep. I did not quite have the muscle memory to run down at this pace and had to arrest a few times with shorter steps - which put a lot of stress on the thighs and butt. I ended up doing very well on the downhill run for me, as for what seemed like a ~90-minute descent I passed 3 people and was passed by 5. After having what seemed like 100 people pass me at the Burner this was a success for me.

The long downhill run actually trained me how to run fast downhills as I only got better and better it seemed. I had one loose shoe that became untied with 1.25 miles to go, but other than that it was the fastest I think I have ever run in my life. The last 2 miles are steep, but mag chloride treated back into town, and I only wish I knew how fast I ran there - it was crazy!

My goal for the big loop race was 2 hrs, 30 mins and I made it just under 2:32 - which considering the loose shoe and a silly stop at one aid station to eat a goo (that I did not need) and fill up a bottle (that I did not drink) - I was amazed at how close I was to goal - considering my Garmin Computer was tucked away and out of site the entire race.

The race had some very fast people - some of the fastest in the state - as the course record was bested by 3 people. The races previous winner - and living legend Bernie Boettcher came in fifth, which is surprising considering how many races he wins on dirt. I ended up doing quite well for me - I was very satisfied with the finish - and I finished 31st out of some 140 racers for the 25k. For the age group, that left me in 4th place 40-49 - just one spot (and 7 minutes) out of a podium. Cool beans - I have seen improvement over the summer!

I'm a mountain bike racer first, so this was nice feedback, and a bit surprising since I have been training with the one day a running week plan!

The food was excellent at the finish, and then I drove home. I took this awesome shot of Red Mountain on the drive back.

The skies are now blue and it looks like a lot of riding now needs to be done. I'll get the bikes back together and try to go for my first ride since Vapor Trail this week. Cheers to fall!

2011 Vapor Trail 125

2011-09-13T17:22:00.000-06:00

As the song says...."it's a long way to the top, if you wanna rock-n-roll."

Very fitting for the Vapor Trail as the climbs are long, and the descents rip roaring fun. I entered for the 5th time this year, and got my fourth finish in this event in the five tries. The gearing was different again this year, with the choice of 34x22 instead of last years 32x21, and as such a little more than half a gear inch taller. If I am smart enough to remember to read this for next year, I'll recommend to go with the 32x21.

Past Reports Below

Clothing was the same as the 2009 report here in this blog, except that I never once put on the leg warmers - as the Boure knee warmers worked well. I did wear the Lake winter shoes and changed to my Sidis at Monarch. Only a jersey under the Pactimo Thermal Jacket was all I needed on the upper body, and the Craft Lobsters shells over the Black Diamond wind block fleece gloves did the trick for the hands.

We started at the now usual 10-PM in downtown Salida at the bridge, and got a nice police escort out of town. Tons of people were downtown cheering us on and it was very cool to see that. When the long neutral start finished, I settled into the second group of racers headed up to the Colorado Trail, following Huck and Dan from Crested Butte, both of the Brick Oven Team (Dan owns the Brick Oven actually, and Huck has his office just right above it). We hit the CT, and we quickly strung out so that there was no conga line or any leap frogging going on. Nothing spectacular, except for the banana I found on the trail right when I was starting a hike-a-bike section, so it was just too easy to pick it up, eat it, and move on. Hey that thing came all the way from Central America, hand picked, loaded on mules, floated on barges and overseas cargo ships and then trains and trucks to a supermarket here in Colorado. I HAD to eat that thing given its journey to the remote trail up in the Colorado Rocky Mountains!

The moon was full, the trails were wet and packed down, and the usual aid stations were well stocked and full of great hosts. I grabbed some grilled cheese sandwiches at the first one, a pancake and sausage breakfast at the second one, and cookies, Hammer Products, cokes, etc all through the race. I did this race again with just 3 water bottles and no pack on my back, and toward the end, just filled up 2 bottles because once past Aid Station No. 2, they are all less than a couple of hours apart after that..

I did not see any other single speeders all evening, as Jeff Hemperley rolled pretty slow after the neutral roll out. No Kevin Thomas this year in his backyard, and of the other single speeders, I recall seeing Andy Lapkass and his fully rigid bike; I met Chad Brockmeyer; and later learned Esther Horiyani was also rocking the one gear. There might have been others, but I did not see too many this year. I ended up finishing 9th place overall, and the 1st singlespeeder to finish again, which is the third time this has happened at the VT 125 for me. Results are located here. I actually was in 7th place up until mile 123, but got passed by two geared riders on the flat paved road right near the finish. I knew it was coming however, because it ALWAYS happens like this for single speeders on this course. Last year it was 3 or 4 who slipped by me at the end, and it's always somewhat frustrating to see. You would think an offer for a road pull might happen, but hey it's racing and it comes with the territory of single speeding. That said, perhaps someday a geared racing may wish to go down in history and pull one of us into the finish.

The ending at the Shawn Gillis household was great as usual, with burgers cooked up on the grill, Avery Beer, and my favorite - the chocolate chip bars and iced brownies! You would think I would skip the sugar after eating all the sugar during the 16+ hours of racing, but nope, these taste too darn good! Had some good conversations with friends, and then rolled into the Silver Lodge Motel, in lieu of my planned camping up at Blanks Cabin. I just wanted a shower, a bed, and some TV.

After doing this race so many times, this year was so stress free and casual from the preparation, to the event itself, and to the finish. I purposely left the Garmin 305 off of the bike this year and had no clock or mileage computer, and that added an extra level of peacefulness out there. I ended up looking at the scenery more this year, perhaps in part because of the full moon and how it lit up the massive mountains an valleys. In fact, after Dan Loftus dropped me on the Old Monarch Pass - a tad before the halfway point - I rode the course alone, except for some recreational riders along the way, many of whom were out to cheer us racers on.

The White Brothers Loop fork was perfect and I just love the 100mm travel now. The Moots did work flawlessly, and I only had two mechanical issues - the Moots CinchPost slipped again like it did at HC100 - and I bent my 34t chain ring pretty bad. The ring is a Surly Stainless Steel cog, and my front tire kicked up a sweet potato sized rock that hit my shin and then bounced right under the chain and I pedaled through, bending the cog. Good thing this was steel, as i just kicked the ring back into "true." Prior to that i actually thought I may have a DNF with the bent ring. If that ring had been aluminum no way would it have been salvageable.

I'll be back next year, and am proud to have finished this monster again. I'll post more as pictures and newspaper articles start to surface.

Mountain Flyer Article and Video

Labor

2011-09-06T07:50:00.003-06:00

The Labor Weekend came and went, and for Jeni & I, mostly it was just another weekend. Holidays here in the mountains are much different than when we lived in the urban areas, as we would always go somewhere else and try to meet the locals. Now we just stay at home, and like most locals, try to avoid those who came from somewhere else.

The weather patterns have brought some thick afternoon rains and it just continues to be enjoyable. Tacky and buff single track calling you right out the front door, with just a few mud puddles to go through.

The vehicles did get some use over the weekend, for trips to the super market and Home Depot, but other than that we fought the war on terrorism and kept our gas consumption to a minimum.

The ability to bike from home even kept the air clean from pollutants. But doesn't that conflict with the economic downturn in which consumer spending is gonna bail us all out?

Maybe that means just buy more bike parts.

I could use another Loop Fork for sure.

Or maybe not.

Harvest

2011-09-03T16:50:00.003-06:00

The Big Friggin Friday Run (BFFR) this week was a nice start at the bottom of Engineer and I ran up the Engineer Mountain Trail up to around 11,700-ft. I then went down the Pass Creek Trail and ran down US 550 to the start, for an exact 13-mile run with 3100-ft of climbing.

When I got near the top it was plain to see that the skunk cabbage is ripe!

What was one lush green, is now turning yellow and starting to decay.

If people could eat this cabbage, I suppose it would be best served with marmot.

The top of Engineer Mountain is over 13k, and I've never been to the top. I may have to hike that someday.

I chose the road to run down for two reasons, with one being for speed, and the other being for safety. I just did not want to scream down Engineer Mountain with end of the week legs and trip on a root. This is probably my last big run before Lead King as Vapor Trail is next week and Lead King the weekend after. Bring on the September fun!

It's bike week here in SW Colorado, but unfortunately for the motorized kind. Lots of graying. black t-shirt wearing, throttle twisters make the valley sound like a continuous low rumbling fart.

September!!

2011-09-01T12:26:00.002-06:00

Last year it was this.

In 2009 it was this.

I'm liking this new video to kick off the best month of the year.

Lucious

2011-08-31T18:59:00.001-06:00

The rainy season is here and it sure is nice. Moisture arrives like clock work in the afternoons and cools things down, makes the soils more tacky, and you don't have to run the lawn sprinklers.

I've been running, riding, and Jeni has been hiking all in town and around it. I got sent to me another FREE copy of Colorado Runner Magazine (I did not know it existed until it arrived 2 issues ago), and it is a really cool magazine - sort of like Mountain Flyer without the cool camera shots, but more race information, including full finish lists.

By joining the local running club - Durango Motorless Transit - at the "family" membership rate of $20 which includes both of us - we get cool emails on organized runs (I never show up for them), information on races, this free magazine, and awesome discounts around town - my favorite is the $2 pints at Steamworks on most beers, anytime, anyday! Join the local mountain bike trail club - Trails 2000 - and it costs $50 for the membership, you get some token discounts, and they put you to work on the trails! LOL. Don't get me wrong here, I like Trails 2000, but it is kind of an interesting comparison.

Injured wrist and rigid fork...what can I say, other than I'm stupid at times.

That lake is not for swimming or recreating near...it's just for looking at.....from a distance! City Reservoir actually, and closed off with a token fence to keep the terrorists away. (ahem)

I ran today and the trails were just so nice with the moisture. Cool, and it's almost that time of year....

Because everyone knows when the best time of the year is, right?

One day away!

(I think you are gonna like the "new" video for this year.....)

Rico-Telluride 100

2011-08-28T19:18:00.000-06:00

So the 2nd annual Rico-Telluride 100 took place this year and my hopes were up for a finish after missing out last year. I still have yet to ride the last Calico Peak loop, and last year it just did not seem possible. I was with my buddy Danny and he said the loop would take 3 hour and I thought it would be closer to five as it takes you back above 12k at the end of the day before a rip roaring descent down into Rico a shade under 9k. I did not bring lights then so I thought it was not doable before dark, but Danny ended up soloing it and his estimate was spot on, he got in before dark being 1 of 2 finishers for this monster.

This year, I had this one on the calendar as a must do, and my goal all season has been absolutely no DNFs. Unfortunately, it did not work out for me on either goal, as I got sick up on Hermosa Peak and later unloaded my bowels up on Lizard Head Pass, which fortunately for me actually has an out house (a disgusting one at that, but hey it works). After that, I knew it was time to call it quits. Well actually I sort of knew this going in the night before as I was not feeling well then. Anyway, I did take some pictures, so here goes.

We started at the Rico Fire Department and would end at an a famous bar called The Enterprise in a structure from the 1800s.

I'm curious if that Ladder Truck is still used in Rico, BTW.

I started out well going up Scotch Creek, but fell behind on the Blackhawk Loop. These guys were up at the pass, about 3 minutes in front of me when I took this photo.

The climb up Black Hawk Pass from this direction is a grunt, but the descent is quite awesome into Celebration Lake.

The Rico-Telluride 1000 route takes some familiarity with the area, but it is an awesome route covering some epic terrain and of course excellent singletrack.

We work our way over toward Lizard Head, shown here in the far distance, and then drop down into Telluride.

I ran 34x22 and it's a good high country gear, although at times I wanted a 32x22.

I ended up with 45 miles and nearly 6k of climbing. I may go back to finish the route before the season is over because I really, really wanted this one. Congrats to all that finished and I will be back near year for sure.

Found fotos from DDC

2011-08-26T13:07:00.000-06:00

With the new I-phones we really don't use the camera any more. However, Jeni did take some fotos from the DDC last month and she used the old Nikon, of which I had to use for work this week and I "found" so more pictures. Fun day indeed, and here are shots from the start and finish of this 100-mile race.

Ryan letting us know he took a DNF.

Looks to be Robins SS and I do not whose that Moots is.

Carney and Sarah both took a finish.

A lot of big packs stuffed full and ready for the adventure.

We started at Tom Nebs new shop, and the Durango Brerwery is just across the street. Made planning too easy, as we would finish on the lawn over there.

Not even a year old, and San Juan Cycles is the best shop in town. I'm there on the platform giving the pre-race announcements.

The No Tubes pro team and their factory team worked with Jeni to give a demonstration on product.

All smiles after 100 miles!

A big Thumbs up from Jeff! I believe he rocked the Firecracker 2 days later....impressive to say the least.

Cool grass for a quick recovery before the beer and good food indoors.

Billy and his wife made the aid stations work to perfection.

Nick took the win in the B ride.

Yours truly wore the downhill jersey and the baggies and skipped the pack. Hey, when you plan the race and know the aid stations you can take chances! 3 water bottles and a couple of Honey Stinger waffles in my pocket was all I needed as the aid stations we provided for free were just as good if not better than many paid for races. Shoot....call it better, because we stocked the last one with beer. I had a nice True Blonde before the big descent.....Ryan down five, but he bailed on the road...bummer.

Shannon and Kayla worked the No Tubes tent.

Cool huh? This thing is only gonna grow. :-)

Tastes like...

2011-08-22T20:02:00.005-06:00

Singletrack tastes sweet.

So does the thrill of a good ride.

But gluten-free beer tastes like ass.

It's wild, man.

The Hoka Review

2011-08-15T10:11:00.000-06:00

So I put on the new Hoka One One shoes and I was very surprised with the result. There does seem to be this school of thought about running barefoot, or faking it by buying a shoe that says it "runs just like being barefoot" whatever that means. But I find that to be somewhat silly, especially for someone who spends significantly more time on a bike than on his feet. The Hokas therefore are on the opposite of that spectrum - maximum protection for the feet to prevent injury.

The shoes have been used by some world class ultra endurance runners and have conquered such hard courses as the Hard Rock 100 with winning times. Immediately while giving these a trial run, I clearly saw why. While my cardiovascular fitness is high due to the cycling, the joint strength needed in running is low due to relatively infrequent running activity. As such it is not hard for me to go out and run myself into the ground, and then it is usually some body part, namely feet or knees that tell me it's time to quit.

I took the Hokas on my normal loop around the college and power line, which is quick 5.5 miler. This starts out flat if I do the college first, and then it hits some down hill and ultimately the rocky power line section. I has some pavement in between, and that is where I first noticed the difference. I usually slow it down on pavement because I feel it in the knees, but the shock absorption of these shoes made it feel like I was running on a treadmill. Ditto that for the rocky sections of trail where I ended up just running through the rocks and not around, sort of like one does on a full suspension bike. The bottom tread is a little light though, so I guess I would compare these to a dual suspension bike with race tires on the bottom.

I finished the run in around forty minutes and it was faster than I've done it before. This was in the middle of a five day block of heavy cycling, so my high end was not exactly high end. In short it was mostly due to being able to run faster on the downhills, the chancy sections, and of course the pavement. The shoes DID make a difference. Well, at least for someone with my fitness and joint weakness. Most cyclists should find similar benefit, and I would suspect ultra runners find these shoes to keep the wear off of them after many hours out there.

There were some negative though and it is something I am going to watch with caution. My stride on downhills was significantly greater, and as such I felt some shin splints coming on. I could see this shoe giving you a bit too much confidence, and my ankle strength is clearly not that of an ultra runner, so it's best to temper my running with these shoes. In other words, I'm gonna do my long distance running in my Cascadias for a while and use these Hokas for shorter speed runs and later on pavement.

I also did trip once, as I sort of expected due to the mass of shoe on the bottom of my feet. You certainly have to be aware of these shoes.

I am excited though about the running with these things as it was pretty embarrassing to run so well uphill at the Burner 25k earlier this year, only to be passed by conga lines on the downhills. This shoe does offer some good promises ahead.

Note: typed with my iPad...sorry for the typos.

White Creek

2011-08-11T10:31:00.000-06:00

I put together a nice loop on the ride yesterday by heading over to the bottom of Engineer Mtn Trail. I climbed up Engineer, and then went over the Colorado Trail, descended it a ways and then took White Creek over to Engine Creek, and rode Cascade back to the finish.

In doing this loop, I also circumnavigated Engineer Mountain.

This is the race bike with the Loop Fork, but I cant stop riding this because I love the 100-mm travel so much!

White Creek ends right at this sign, next to Engine Creek, but it is not marked. In fact the trail leads to a camping spot, so it might confuse others who wish to ride this in reverse - which would be a great option to cut out the tough climb over to where the CT intersects the Rico-Silverton Trail.

The sheep herd from last week is up on this mountain ridge, and they were taunting me with their devil baaaaahs! If you look closely, you can see the sheep up there.

White Creek is such a gentle trail for one up this high. It's mostly on the fall line and it seems as if it were cut for mountain bikers.

This is the valley that the Rico-Silverton Trail descends down, and it was difficult to keep myself from turning down that as the descent just looks awesome!

I can ride up here all damn day.

Still some snow up here, as the pass is around 12,600-ft.

I ran into a trail runner and he was doing the Molas-to-Coal Bank run, of which I really want to do sometime soon.

A few other bikers were out there, as I caught two girls climbing up engineer and then ran into my neighbors near Engine Creek. But the coolest thing was running into the CT through hikers, as there was a little Corgi dog who was walking with them. That is a lot of steps for such a little dog!

SSweatleaf

2011-08-10T10:38:00.001-06:00

Tim was passing through town so we met up on the Pass Creek Trail and hit some high Colorado trails.

We did my normal run loop and came down Coal Creek.

Tim is another in a long line of super strong Santa Fe riders.

Although he is Santa Fe by-way-of Baltimore.

Excellent views and weather right now!

Enjoy!

Hoka-Polka

2011-08-08T12:24:00.001-06:00

You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, and you shake it all about......

A friend of ours won a pair of the Hoka 11 running shoes and she wanted to sell them at a price cheap enough for me to give them a try. The photos here do not do justice, but suffice to say these are the Doc Martens of running shoes. I'm darn near 2 inches taller when wearing them.

I've been digging the Cascadias, but given the chance to try these at a good price, I bit. Since I do a one day a week run, and its usually a big run, this makes sense as a way to absorb the shock a bit.

We will see how it is to run in these things. That is a lot of stuff under my foot, and hopefully not a trip hazard.

As an aside though, perhaps someday a shoe manufacturer will make a dirt-colored shoe. The Cascadias are a bright red when new, and these are almost fluorescent yellow. Soon they will just look dirty and used like my Cascaidas already look. I understand the greed of the modern gear and apparel manufacturers - flash the "new" product at the retail store, and hope they don't make it to the next season, so as not to impede future sales - or if that is too cynical for you, at least flash the product to be seen and recognized by everyone who comes across your path. American marketing and sales 101.

But, at some level, somewhere, you would think at least one company would make a shoe intended not to look trashed after the first run. Oh, my Vasques were at least a flat gray when I bought them, so maybe that is the company doing that.

Crossing the Rico Divide

2011-08-07T10:33:00.001-06:00

There exists an imaginary line that most folks in Durango do not cross in the back country - one that I call the Rico Divide. We head up to Black Hawk, Bolam Pass, the Colorado Trail, but rarely do folks on this side ever find the time to venture over to the East Fork Trail. This trail is just a stones throw away from the Colorado Trail, but it goes in the opposite direction and as such gets little notice by folks on our side.

Even the names are changed in the Rico zone, as we would call this road Bolam Pass, but they call it Barlow Creek. Whatever the name, it is a bear to climb at the end of the day.

To do the loop, I started at Purgatory, or now called Durango Mountain Resort. I ventured up over to Relay Creek Road and found the old Graysill singletrack that was used in the Durango 100 MTB race before it was shut down.

I packed three bottles and a pack, but only packed more of the free food gained at races as I need to get rid of most of these bars before they get stale.

Last time I was here was back in 2006, sometime after 7AM and in a full on rain storm. It was much nicer this time. That old Durango 100 MTB race was just cursed.

A view of where everone else was at - the Colorado Trail through Blackhawk Pass. This weekend the Colorado Trail is the most popular place to be, so I made sure to avoid it.

Graysill singletrack is just hard. Little rocks, soggy spots, little steeps, and when finished you are just surprised at how slow you moved through there.

I made it up to Celebration Lake and ran into Mint, Chad and their ladies. They were doing an overnight trip from Molas to town - all 74 miles of high country Colorado Trail. They had friends set up camp at Hotel Draw, which seems like a good place to spend the night.

I then ventured across the Rico Divide and took one of my favorite trails in the area - East Fork.

I saw a lot of motorcycle tracks, so I assume those are the folks who keep this trail open and free of deadfall. Awesome!

Miles of sweet singletrack!

And it leads you over to Lizard Head.

Not a bad way to spend the day, even if I hurt bad after the 14-mile run the day prior.

40-ozs to Freedom

2011-08-06T10:09:00.001-06:00

The wrist injury has gone down with the cortisone shot, but it is very difficult to not use the wrist on your dominant hand. Amazing how one little joint can bring things to a halt. Even brushing your teeth can cause inflammation strangely enough.

But I did get in some rides during the week, one on the cross bike, one on the road bike, and one on the mountain bike with Ryan. With Ryan, we got hit hard with rain and it trashed the bike something fierce as the worst part came when we had to descend down Engineer Mountain. Lots of grit and grime got everywhere - in the headset, the wheel bearings, etc. Ryan forgot his rain jacket though, so how can I complain - he trashed his bike and nearly froze to death in the process. Of course, it was warm and full of sunshine by the time we got back in town.

But the event thus far, was the big Friday run. I headed up to Pass Creek again, and ran all the way over to Engine Creek. I really wanted to descend that trail with Ryan earlier on the bike, but the weather changed that plan....so I decided to run down the trail and figure out the rest later.

I picked up a small Dakine bladder pack that holds around 70-oz, but I filled it to 40 to not be too weighted down. A couple of nutrition bars gathered as freebies at races this year, and this time my bomb proof Showers Pass jacket.

I just love running up here at 11,000 plus feet. The more time you spend up here, the easier it is to move around.

The run down Engine Creek was a blast after the ~5 mile run up high. Lots of work has been done to this trail lately and it was in excellent shape. I then ran into Cascade Creek Trail, and took that over to the base of Engineer Mountain Trail. Mostly un eventful, except for the tourons on horses.

Cascade Trail is mostly, up, down, up down, in the trees and as I ran up one little incline, I spotted to horses up on the next incline. I'm not sure I spooked the horse, but the closest rider did have his horse run right off the trail, down a ditch and it even got on its hind legs. I stopped and then let them regroup, and the rider got off and dragged the horse to the trail.

He then proceeded to yell at the top of his lungs - "Stop fucking running, you are scaring the horse!"

Um, I think screaming at the top of your lungs is scaring the horse. And yelling, and also cursing at a total stranger, is not only inappropriate, but also dangerously foolish. I responded with a simple, "Mr. you need to check your ego and attitude when speaking to strangers." He told then proceeded to continue yelling, and I just jogged around them. What a tool.

If you can't control the horse, you should not be on it. Period. Yelling when trying to control a horse, clearly shows that you don't know how to control one. And, really, what the heck did I do other than come with 50-yards of these tools? Certainly no crime there, as I have every right to be in the trail and I certainly didn't do anything to try to spook the horse. This fool, just had no horse riding skill, as was evident by his screaming profanities.

I've made far louder and scarier approaches to horses while on a mountain bike. Most of the riders around here know what they are doing, but this was pretty obvious that the guy was inexperienced. Tourist season will soon be over, I hope.

I stopped the run at the base of the Engineer Trail. I had visions of running back up Engineer and then finishing on Pass Creek back to the car, but by this time, I had 14-miles, 2400-ft of climbing, and climbing another 3k and adding 7 more miles was just not in the cards. I was almost out of water and had half a bar left. So I went to US 550 and hitched a ride with two real estate guys from Pagosa who were on their way to Grand Junction for the weekend. It was a bit surreal after watching the idiot with the horses attack me for just being there, and then having these two strangers give a little assist. My faith in the human race was restored, a bit.

Scared of Sheep

2011-08-02T09:06:00.000-06:00

The weekend adventures continue, but this last one was one that I would rather forget. I bailed on the MFSL as the body was just too tired from 3 - 100-mile races in 4 weeks. So I went up Cascade to explore, with the hope of climbing Graysill Trail to the CT and over to Bolam and then perhaps down Relay Creek via the Graysill Mine. I ended up missing the turn to Graysill and went pretty far up Cascade.

I brought the race bike with the new 100mm WB Loop fork and it worked flawlessly.

Eventually, I made it to this nice waterfall that was not approachable given the massive insect infested swamp around it.

I managed a slo-motion end-over at the start, not 8 minutes into the ride. Must have ran into a rock and stepped on the pedal and rotated. Landed perfectly on my nose, and bled for sometime, unbeknownst to me that I had been cut. There were some weird looks from hikers, but no one said anything until I ran into two other bikers. I just thought I had a bloody nose.

Back down the trail, and then I crossed a creek and finally found Graysill Trail, which is hard to climb on a singlespeed. Up there, I caught Cascade Road and went to the Colorado Trail, and at that point I determined that I would soon get rain soaked, so I just rolled Cascade back to Purgatory and then on 550 to the car.

That evening turned out to be a adventure, and one that I wish I had over. I have a legacy wrist injury that has been looked at by hand specialists in the past. Some bone damage, some torn and frayed ligaments, and some nuisance pain that pops up from time to time. While showering and getting ready for dinner, the wrist just blew up and looked like someone shoved an egg in there. Its just a wrist, so I iced it, and hoped for it to stop swelling. But it got worse. So bad in fact that the pain got ridiculous, sort of a pinched nerve throbbing pain. Shoot...time to go to the Urgent Care Center. Really all they could do was inject me with pain meds, and then they gave me a OxyContin....which put me out. That was horrible as it pretty messed me up all day Sunday. I felt like a zombie and by the time it wore off, late afternoon all I wanted to do was get a run in. So with the hand in a splint, I went up to the passes with the hope of running my 8-mile, 2300-ft of climbing, favorite trail run - Up Pass Creek, over on Engineer to Coal Creek, and down Coal Creek, and then a nice closing pavement run up 550 back to the car. I had run this the previous Thursday, so even though I got to the passes by 4-pm, I felt comfortable giving it a go.

The nose looked a little better once cleaned up. The doctor actually put a super glue compound on it in lieu of stitches. It was a circular thumb sized gash, so that surprised me.

This time of year, this run is only good during the week as the tourists are usually crowding the first 2-miles of the Pass Creek Trail. On Thursday, though, some camping group had 20+ tents up here on the Engineer. Its probably better to run with the Ipod so you can ignore the questions much easier.

I started to hear some awful noises during my run, and for a while I assumed it must be elk. I got closer and realized that a flock of sheep had taken refuge on the trail. I scouted the flock for a while in the hope of seeing a sheep dog around, but I did not see him. Not knowing where the dog was, and knowing that I would have to run right through the flock of sheep was not a good feeling, so I bailed and did an out an back instead. Less climbing, but still nearly 7 miles itself.

I got a cortisone shot for the wrist on Monday, but I'm going to have lay off it for a while. With the biking, renewed interest in upper body weight lifting, painting, etc, this flair up is an overuse injury. I'm not so sure I want to go through the surgery to get it repaired and would much rather try to manage it. So it's in a split, and left hand typing for now. Baaaaa!

Loop Review

2011-07-30T10:19:00.000-06:00

After a minor mishap. I got the new White Brothers Loop 29er fork mounted up on the race bike, the Moots Mooto-X with Ybb. The fork is 100-mm in travel and it has a 15mm through axle in lieu of a quick release. I was able to purchase a conversion kit for the American Classic disk hub to modify it so that it works with the 15mm through axle.

As with all White Brothers forks, the setup is easy. In fact, white Brothers must know my weight and preferences by now, because the fork was pre-set to 80-psi. The Compression knob now only turns 180-degrees, in lieu of the previous 8 or 9 turns. Rebound adjust still on the lower right leg.

I rode with the first generation BWR Team Europe kit, which is something I do not break out often. I figured that with such a high class fork on the bike, it was time to wear the Italian crafted duds.

American Classic has a special black box wheelset with these curved spokes that makes you move 47% faster. Either that or this is a trick of the camera.

The Loop fork ride was very, very different from my WB Magic and BW .8 forks, and not just because of the 100mm travel. This fork is buttery smooth, and it soaks up small bumps significantly better than previous generations of WB forks. To prove this point, I was able to ride with no hands on choppy mag chloride roads, whereas I just could not do this with the older forks as they almost behaves rigid for small bumps.

There is no lockout, or Magic IMV valve on this fork, and I did notice a little bobbing when standing and climbing, so I turned the compression knob to the fullest and it abated. Very easy to do now with just 180-degree turn and a nice tab on the knob. As with all White Brothers forks, there also was no issue with brake dive. Having the 100mm travel was very noticeable as well, in short I love this fork and am already wanting another one for the ride bike, and not just the race bike. White Brothers has some classy people, and thanks to Noah for the assist in getting this fork, and Eric in building it.

On the way back to town, I got hungry and I pulled out a Honey Stinger Waffle. I really like these and they remind me of when I lived in Southern Minnesota in a Belgian community. The locals would make cookies like these for Christmas and stack them up like Pringles in little plastic or wax paper packages.

I really want to ride the heck out of this bike, but will keep the miles down as there are some more races soon up on the horizon. In short though, there is a huge difference between my new and older White Brothers forks, and this new Loop is exactly what I want.

Home

2011-07-27T22:42:00.001-06:00

Nice to be back and try to find some semblance in a routine. Merv and Jangles sure like it for sure, as does Jeni, or so I'm told. Did some household chores today and then went out for a foodless fifty ride on the x-bike. It's a perfect match as you can hook up singletrack and the valley loop, and in fact I even descended down the Waterfall Trail to do it.

Floating is really popular this year as we got the late snow melt and the early monsoons. It seems the Dave Chenault ride, raft, run routine is getting quite popular and perhaps I incorporate this sometime soon. This is smack dab in the middle of town here.

And we even have a rapids park.

Got home for a load of Stans goodness delivered by the brown Santa. Not all for me, but some there nonetheless.

Then it was onto Ska for a nice little party put on by the local trail group. You have to love a brewery that moves beer in piping with Victaulic fittings...... ok, so not all the beer flows directly in that 6" piping, but it sure looks like it does, eh?

They should have added a butterfly valve there for effect, no? Or maybe even a relief valve complete with a pitcher below the overflow port.

Bender

2011-07-27T12:29:00.001-06:00

Whew, what a trip! I made it out to Bend, OR for the 3rd ever High Cascade 100, another National Ultra-Endurance (NUE) race. Nice write up here at Singletrack Magazine. The start was pretty chilly, but only because we started at 5:30-AM!

I chose the usual Divinity gearing for this and was a bit under geared at times, but others finished ahead of me who rode lesser and greater gearing. So as usual its about how you spin it, not what you spin.

I wore the Breckenridge jacket for the first loop in lieu of the vest and arm warmers, mostly because they had an on-course - and well placed and timed - clothing drop-off. Really first class approach here, because while the 5:30-AM is a pain in the arse, I do understand why they do it. This is a race of heavy hitters, but it also allows some slower riders the chance to finish. Last year they let some guy race for 16:35 on the course. Wow, that only helps grow the sport and this 100-mile format is sure to be the future of mountain biking racing because it is participatory for both pros and amateurs. You get more racers showing up for NUE events than you do for USAC, thats for sure.

I wore our European Team kit, as I did for the Breckenridge 100. I really like how it feels, especially the shoulders and sleeves of the jersey which are one piece, spandex type material - with no annoying cuff.

The course ended up being 108-miles, with 12,281-ft of climbing, with the lowest elevation around 4100-ft, and the highest around 6300-ft. There were no big climbs, and the course had to be near 100-miles of singletrack, it was incredible! Nothing but flowy, moto-style singletrack, with some logs and rocks to contend with. In fact, I did more log rollovers on this race, than I have done the entire season combined.

I would have liked some long sustained, high elevation climbs, but then again thats what I have here in Colorado, so it was nice to ride something else. I did crash pretty hard around mile 86, and the forensics of the crash left me with a sore left leg - Charley Horse - no bruising thank goodness, and my saddle was knocked so hard it pointed almost straight up. I think I hit a pedal on a log, dunno for sure. I crashed again around mile 102, just being careless. No mechanicals, other than my bottom bracket worked its way loose again, like it did at Bailey 100. A tad annoying and it did ruin all stealth capability out there. I finished 7th place SingleSpeed, with 6th and 5th just less than a couple of minutes in front of me. The crash knocked a bit out of me, but as it stands I did this race somewhere around a comfortable pace - only 12-minutes anerobic, which is 5 minutes more than Breck 100. I'm gonna have to step it up a bit, or just continue having fun riding these and be more strategical for next year. I had fun though, and even though the drive was so incredibly long, it was worth it, at least on the singletrack.

On the way back, I camped up high outside of Provo up at Strawberry Reservoir. Really nice up there, and I would liked to have ridden, but man, I just wanted to get home.

I always take these night before the race bike shots in the hotel room. Cool thing for this race was that I got a personalized number plate. Wish I could have arisen to the occasion though, but that said, these NUE events are truly National Races, and it's not like going against the boy scouts up in Delta. Tough, competition, and I am proud to be a part of the NUE series.

I met up with Gerry Pflug, the national SingleSpeed champion for the NUE the last few years pre-race and we went out to dinner at the Cascade Brewing Company. Really good food, and so convenient since it was accross the street from the hotel, and just a few minutes from the race starts. Thanks to Jeni and her accumulated Marriott points, the room was free as well!

Bend, OR is a real cool place. It was a lot larger than I had expected, and it's more a Breckenridge type of town, than it is Durango. Trails and soil were a lot like Flagstaff, but the town has a more west coast, dare I say, California type feel. Lots of tourists there in the town, but I did not see one trailer mounted with ATVs and Texas licence plates - whereas I did see a lot of Lexus type vehicles on their way to the golf courses. So there you have it.

The drive to and from Bend, was very long and mostly uneventful. I was somewhat taken aback though when entering Oregon and trying to fill up for gas. They have a state law that requires that gas station attendants actually pump your gas for you. In fact, one station had them in full dress from the 1950's - think Navin R. Johnson.

I'm home now, somewhat rested and ready to ride.

Breckenridge 100 - 2011

2011-07-19T12:14:00.002-06:00

I entered my 6th Breckenridge 100 race this last weekend and took a finish, wahoo! I finished in 8th Place for the SingleSpeed class, missing the podium by 19-minutes with a finish time of 10 hours, 49 minutes, assuming they did 5 places like last year. Initially I was disappointed, but in looking at the numbers I can in no way shape or form complain about the performance this year, in fact I should be satisfied. Read on....

The Breckenridge course has had some changes over the years, most significantly the Loop 1 Miner's Ridge insertion and Loop 2 shortened CT Section + Blair Witch in 2007 being the course that deviated the most. For the most part, though, Loop 3 has remained the same, with a route change in 2009 that has since stuck. Its not exactly true to say the course changes have resulted in a wash, but for the purposes of this discussion, it's close enough.

I make note of these course changes only as a preface to my analysis of the race this year, because for this years race, I did start very slow on Loop 1, somewhat intentionally, but perhaps a bit too relaxed. I chatted with friends most of the way up, which is something I have been unable to do in years past as the faster pace of prior years would dictate only focused breathing. This year, when I finished that first loop, and I heard there were 40+ people in front of me, it really made me believe that yes, it is true, I am indeed getting slower! Oh man that sucks!!!!! That was what I had stuck in my head for the rest of the day, and while I can't say it bothered me, it did put me in a ride mode rather than a race mode which meant I felt good for the duration of the event, and had no cramping or pain cave issues.

The rest of the race was mostly uneventful with the usual comments: great singletrack, excellent competitors, great support and aid stations, and a very well marked course. We did have rain on Loop 3 and I put the jacket on 4 times, which slowed me down a little. I did this only because I was racing conservatively and since there were so many people in front of me, I perhaps was deep down wishing for torrential downpour of epic, life threatening proportions to knock down a few in front of me. Sometimes Mother Nature does assist in wins, but this year that was not the case. In fact most of the people in front me that I talked to took the opposite approach - eff the rain and take their chances. I can understand that. My point here is that my placement in this race at the time of the rain probably dictated my more conservative approach, because most people know me as a minimalist.

So I got to the finish and all I could think of was that I ran a 10:06 (43-minutes FASTER in 2008!) here a few years back, so yes indeed I MUST be slower this year. The drive home allowed for some short analysis, but it was actually looking at numbers from years past to draw a better and more informative conclusion. So, I pulled up my results for the last 6 years, and here it is;

(Year, Loop 1, Loop 2, Finish) in hours, minutes

2011 3:15 6:59 10:49

2010 3:07 6:57 10:45

2009 2:59 6:59 DNF

2008 3:05 6:24 10:06

2007 3:29 7:05 10:49

2006 unk unk 11:59

One might want to focus on the 2008 number and always expect the 10:06 finish, and in framing the analysis this way, it means that I was 43-minutes off that mark. However, I recall reading a book called The Drunkard's Walk over the winter from Leonard Mlodinow, a Physics Professor at Cal Tech and a subscriber to Randomness Theory. One of his discussion points was on expected performance, with the example of baseballs home run record being used. To move along quickly here, the basic point was to not focus on the extremes, but rather bet on Regression to the Mean. By just looking at the 2011, 2010, and 2007 finish times, that group of three is all within 4 minutes of each other, and as such I noticed that I am NOT slower, but performing right as expected!

In fact, one could say the field has actually gotten stronger at Breckenridge over the years, which is quite obvious just looking at start/finish lists. That's actually a refreshing conclusion, and without getting into slight course differences, weather as a factor, excuses, blah, blah, blah, I can't complain one the bit. In fact, I only wish I had done a percent gray hair count over the years, and compare that to my finish time!

Even though I am an engineer, I am usually not overly analytic in race results, but this year I actually decided to take notice. Interesting to see the slight changes in performance over the year, and with added knowledge it makes this even more interesting. Case in point - compare 2011 vs. 2009. I killed the climb up Peak 9 for Loop 1 in 2009, and rode it slow in 2011. The end result for completing Loop 2 was exactly 6:59 for BOTH years. Note that I cramped very hard and had to stop several times in 2009, but had no issues this year and it made Loop 2 relatively easy, in fact. I just started slower. Morale of the story is that I buried myself in 2009, and went conservative in 2011, and both years finished pretty much the same at Loop 2!! Of course, I later failed to finish in 2009 because I had buried myself too far. In fact, I fully believed in beating the 2008 time and risked a finish in order to do so. Hence my mistake and ultimate DNF. Know your limits.

Somewhere in the numbers there can be goals set, improvements made, but its nice to know a baseline performance now, and as such I suppose I made a passing grade in this years Breck 100. Cool!

Going Loopy

2011-07-12T10:39:00.000-06:00

So, I got my new White Brothers Loop fork and I'm now waiting for the wheel changes. Man, it looks like no Loop for Breckenridge, but all other races there after should be a go! I'm finally gonna be sporting 100mm travel - and now with a 15mm through axle. This is sweet and will make those classic CO 3 to 5k descents much more enjoyable.

You can get the fork in white or black, and this time I chose white.

The 15mm set up comes with it's own axle in lieu of a quick release, so no more purchase of the separate quick release and it will now be a lot less flexible.

Since I switched to 29er, I've been running White Brothers - since 2005. I've got every 100-miler, 12-hour, and 24-hour race I've ever done on either White Brothers BW or Magic suspension forks, save for a couple of full rigid races. I briefly ran a Maverick inverted fork with the 20mm (I think) through axle up front and I was really impressed with the stiff and no flex hub. This new approach for White Brothers and the 15mm should be a hit!.

In addition, I stopped over by Chris Herting's work shop and the 3D Racing owner set Jeni's Carver 96er up for another water bottle mount. Just drill the holes, and pop in a threaded rivet insert all for the price of $10 USD. Chris has been building bikes longer than most people reading have been riding. Don't believe me, well then read this. Pretty nifty, huh?

Rock and Roll!!!!!

High Country

2011-07-10T11:33:00.000-06:00

There actually has been a lot of riding going on since the DDC, and all the mountain version of it up in the High Country. Took a tour of Deer Creek for the first time as well, and the next day took a run up on Engineer. The Colorado High Country is scenic, and the riding is awesome, but sometimes its hard to remember to take photos. I've got to fit it in because this summer is getting busier by the day....before we know it it will be fall. Bummer to all the New Mexicans out there who are not getting a summer riding season. We've started the monsoon rains and that means the lawn sprinklers get a rest. Let's hope the rain heads south as well because our smoky neighbor is messing up the skies.

DDC 2011

2011-07-03T12:37:00.002-06:00

Durango Dirty Century 2011 - it was a hit! Loads of fun with riders out there from 12 to darn near 24 hours for the full enchilada. Check out the slideshow from Jeff Kerkove of the course.

SMI²LE

2011-06-28T22:11:00.001-06:00

Apparently I ended up winning the combined 1/2 Burner and 1/2 Growler despite running like I drank too much electric kool-aid. Thanks to friends who stayed around, I won some schwag but it was adorned with the above message. I have no earthly idea what this means.

I thought all I had to do was just stand up or walk.

Cape of Good Hope

2011-06-28T09:29:00.000-06:00

With some tired and heavy legs I rode up to the Cape of Good Hope on the Colorado Trail on Monday. Those switchbacks before reaching the Cape never feel good, that is unless you do an out and back and get to descend them (finally!).

This is one of those trails that will get put into Wilderness if the Hermosa Wilderness Bill ever gets approved. The USFS head ranger here has made it his life goal to get the Hermosa Watershed into wilderness and this steel post reflects his tenure. Mark a trail as "Neglected", good use of tax payer dollars, huh?

The DDC will stand as is this year, although I doubt there will be many finishers of the 'A' ride due to the amount of snow piles to trudge through on Blackhawk and Indian Peaks. I trudged through a few to get to Good Hope, but found them to be nothing more than minor nuisances. The tree clearing crews are working hard right now and I ran into them up on Hotel Draw, and the section of trail to Good Hope only had a few trees down. Looks to be good times this weekend!

Kennebec

2011-06-26T19:40:00.000-06:00

It was time to hit up Kennebec pass and ride the CT back into town. It's a long way up there to the pass, about 27 miles, but the climb is great and then once up there you are treated to awesome views.

I always like checking out the mining debris before hitting the actual pass.

My friend, Manny the Marmot did make an appearance, but he was camara shy. He lives in the boilers, and if you don't believe me, click here.

Its a hike a bike in sections at the pass still.

But all dry back into town. A 5000-ft descent from here, with an infamous 1000-ft climb in the middle of it though.

All smiles for this up coming descent.

Scree field was a bit loose, so I stopped an took a picture.

In both directions.

We are past summer solstice, but there is still a lot of snow up there.

I saw a lot of waterfalls over the weekend, and some were more dramatic, but this one is sort of well known on the CT. The singletrack descend right to it.

This a is a great loop from town and when making back up the mesa to the casa it's a 7000-ft climbing day in less than 60 miles, but it moves relatively fast.

DDC Reconn

2011-06-25T18:12:00.002-06:00

Made a trip out to Hermosa Park and met up with Rebecca to check out the trail conditions for next weeks Durango Dirty Century. Ended up climbing to Bolam Pass, riding over to Graysill Mine and then Climbing Hotel Draw for the Corral Draw descent. A few big snow drifts still up there right now on part of the CT at Blackhawk, but with luck, they should be mostly gone by next weekend.

A little bit of water crossing at the end to cool down the legs.

Bring a shovel for next weekend. LOL

The Evil Eye of Sauron

I passed this in a down pour during the 2006 Durango 100 MTB race, which is now defunct. The water level was really high and they had volunteers on each side of the water fall to try to catch you if you slipped and fell. Man, what a wild race - the start was delayed at 6AM because it was raining so hard. We took off 40 minutes later and within 3 pedal strokes out bikes were covered with mud. I actually washed my drivetrain in the creek when I passed. If we do a DDC re route we will pass through here.

Epic CT singletrack.

A bit of snow at Blackhawk Pass next week will make the DDC really adventurous to say the least.

But the views are always amazing up there.

Not ridden by many, which is a surprise - truly one of the best Durango area trails. Unfortunately the DDC route does not cover Corral Draw. it just passes by. But if we do a re-route we will do Corral Draw as well. I'm leaning toward keeping the original DDC path and just suffering with snow drifts and dead fall intermittently . This is back country mountain biking, not rolling laps in the park!

The Corral Draw Trail starts out winding it's way through this field of Skunk Cabbage.

Great ride and loads of fun, but high creek water did a number on the bike. Had to remove BB cups today.

I'm hoping to get up to Kennebec on Sunday and perhaps the Indian Peaks Area as well.

Bailey Hundo

2011-06-21T09:51:00.002-06:00

So I finally got to try out the Bailey 100 race this year after last years diversion. In 2010, I had enrolled in the Flagstaff Barn Burner 104, which was the same day as the Hundo but had been announced prior. Knowing and loving Flagstaff through all these years, it too about 3 nano-seconds to sign up for that race. Much to my chagrin, however, the race was cancelled at the last minute, because well Flagstaff was on fire! I begged frantically at the last minute to get into the Hundo, but to no avail. So this year, I signed up directly for the Hundo.

Here are some images from Mark Elasser's brother:

The town of Bailey and me go back a long ways...to about 1974 or 1975. My dad's employer had a camp / retreat in town so we visited both in summer, and later on in winter. I actually learned to downhill ski at the nearby, and closed Geneva Basin Ski Area as well somewhere around 1978 or 1979. What is amazing, is that I knew exactly where the camp was, even though I did not drive back then. It's since been sold to a fly fishing camp, but the cool thing is that we rode right past the camp at the start of the race, and finished within 1.5 mile of it.

More images from Mr. Elasser: (really nice camera work, huh?)

Thanks to my buddy Cal, who raced this last year I got some advice on what to run. I brought a 34x20 gear on the singlespeed, and should have gone rigid fork like Cal had mentioned. Either that or pump up the WB fork with a lot of air, because turning a tall gear makes you stand up more, and I've been spinning the Divinity Gearing all spring which meant I was prepared to sit and spin through any thing. That would not be the case here.

I ran into the usual group of friends and racers and can say that this race is stacked from one to the other...there were Colorado heavy hitters all through the line-up. I did not do as well as I would have liked, but finished in 8 hours and 35 minutes with some room for improvement. Lessons learned for my first race here was that the hundo is a lot like the Growler, which is a hard race for me. The first ~30ish-mins of both are crucial because they start with road and then go into singletrack and if you do not get in front, then you are stuck in the conga line on the singletrack. I used to be good at that, but this time, I just let others rool on by when we left town thinking I'd catch them later. Excellent singletrack on this course, with absolutely no "uh-oh" sections made it seems really easy, but it was darn near impossible to pass given the twisty sections with vegetation or burned downfall all around.

Congrats go out to Carney for the SS win! I ran into Looney after she crashed around mile 35 or so, and good for her on the recovery - she took the win again for the females. I rode a lot with a young racer from Salida, Craig Nelson who pulled me for several miles on the flat paved section at after Aid Station 6. He was on gears and surprisingly slowed down several times to make sure I could get a nice wind blocked ride here. He went on to win his age group too - 20-29 mens. Way to go Craig!

I rode the Moots Mooto-X again and it was perfect along with the new SRAM/Stans No Tube wheelset and the Maxxis Ikon tires. My trusty White Brothers fork was spot on.

So I'm torn for next year, but if run the same gear it would be with a rigid fork perhaps. Either that or I just spin Divinity and work on the road sections. Whatever the case, it's good to be back racing mountain bikes - really my first "true" race of the year as the DDG-160 was a cross bike 'ride' and the Growler 32 was part of the half enchilada 25k run, 32-mile run event. I'm not sure I'll be able to ramp it up by Breckenridge - Carney put a good 40-minutes on me here in Bailey - but this season might just be like 2008 where i don't get my act together until September. Dunno for sure, but I'm gonna have a fun time riding my tail off this summer and see how things progress.

Ruby Slippers

2011-06-15T20:19:00.003-06:00

The other choice was neon green, so red it is. Got my discount from the Running Store via my new membership at Durango Motorless Transit. This group rocks! Best discounts in town. And you have to love a shoe that has the nuclear hazard icon in it's tread. Supposed to be rock proof.

The old Vasques blew out in the sole. I liked the shoe bottom tread, but the heel cup was too loose and it annoyed me up on the rocky and techy Raiders Ridge. On smooth road or trail it was not much of a concern, but those slightly off camber landings caused heel movement and it made for some questionable foot plants.

These fit snug - at least like a new shoe always does. Let's see how these Brooks hold up. It's been a long, long time since I've had a pair of Brooks shoes. I remember my mom buying me a pair at The Athlete's Foot in Greeley in early 1979, and the shoe tread piece not holding on more than a couple of months. The tread strip came right off and we tried to glue it back on on, but to no avail. Isn't it strange to say that while shoe technology has advanced, the industry now is based in third world countries...and the quality and performance is expected to be better? How is that for progress?

I may not be the best runner, and my mountain biking may be slowing down, but I'm liking the marriage of the two sports for me personally. Besides mountain bike racing has devolved to a very primal narcissistic level - the categories pretty soon will include not only age, gear ratio and gender splitting, but someday soon we will also have racial, DNA, hair / eye color, and SAT scoring criteria. That said, my last running race did the same, so maybe it's just our culture. America always seeks slight differences. But I digress.

I'll probably put off any competitive runs until late fall early winter, but I plan to keep the weekly Raiders 10-mile run up. The run seems to be strengthening and stretching the joints quite well.

Henderson Lake

2011-06-13T13:37:00.000-06:00

I rode out to Henderson Lake for the first time, which is past the north terminus of the Missionary Ridge Trail. The views down into the upper Hermosa Valley were amazing!

The lake was pretty cool, too. Its a long way up there, but there were quite a few visitors up there, either by car, ATV, motorcycle, or in my case, bicycle.

There were parts that I almost thought I might see a sign for Reno - Bear - Flagstaff as the terrain reminded me of Crested Butte in parts.

Further on is the Lime Mesa, of which I keep hearing stories of epic single track out there. I hope to find time to investigate this year.

Cha, cha, changes...

2011-06-12T10:15:00.001-06:00

Big things ahead and its challenge to keep the balance. However, there is still time to ride and after bailing on Steve who wanted to do a big adventure out near Pagosa, I did my usual and rode from home. I just really enjoy riding from the garage and not driving anywhere for a wheel spin.

Took a climb up to Missionary Ridge via Pioneer Trail and hit the cell towers and then some of the ridge trail, which sadly is still covered in deadfall.

As I dropped back down the road and Pioneer, I finally veered into Edgemont and rode through and down on the east end of Horse Gulch Road. Pretty cool loop and ending in the Gulch brought on more singletrack.

While I was out biking, it was another Podium for Merv the Cat!

He's a super star, you know?

Madden 2011

2011-06-09T12:26:00.001-06:00

The PsychloX has opened up riding more local options it seems almost exponentially. The usual road ride up to the passes, while definitely world-class, does get routine. Peak climbing is fun, but not always on dirt roads on the mountain bike. So the cross bike offers up road bike like qualities and it also opens up adventures on terrain not suited for the road bike.

This little excursion was an attempt to make it up Madden Peak, by riding paved and dirt county roads over and through Hesperus and then connecting at Cherry Creek for the rail grade to Mancos Hill, where the road up Madden is. I got to Mancos Hill, but a late start and a flat tire made me return without summiting. It still came out to ~55-miles and 4200-ft of climbing, and with the Madden section added that will add perhaps another 3k and 20 miles.

The next one to throw into the routine will be the climb Endlich Mesa to 11k, which I've done on MTB and I'll also take the long Missionary Ridge Road out which is another great, long, and quiet x-bike ride.

Lumps

2011-06-06T12:22:00.001-06:00

Climbed up to Coal Bank on Sunday on the Moots Vamoots roadie machine and had a hard time getting warmed up. The spin out to Baker's Bridge was slow - very slow as my legs were tired from the week prior, but then getting passed by Deadly Nedly at the bridge was enough to wake me up. He got a good distance on me before the climb up old Shalona, so I tried my hardest to reel him and for a time, I did make some ground. Thats the advantage of a singlespeed bike - short steep climbs and you take off, whereas geared bikes start slower. But by the time we got to the time trial finish, I had pegged Zone 5 and that would make the rest of the climb up to Coal Bank quite exhaustive. I kept him in diminishing sight all the way to Haviland Lake, but by then it was time to go at my own pace and continue the painful cadence (50-rpm?).

A beautiful day nonetheless and it came out to a 5700-ft climb in a 75-mile round trip which includes the climb back up to the house. I'm not afraid to spend time on the roads right now, which is far from years past where it was singletrack and nothing else. Hit the trails during the week and hit the big climbs on the weekend.

Life During Wartime

2011-06-04T20:33:00.002-06:00

Or perhaps life at 10k...this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. The new PsychloX makes quick trips up to Champion Ventures (a 4k climb) without the slog through the Valley if you wanna climb to Purg (a 3k climb). Much better, higher, quieter, and more scenic(er). Superlatives abound!

Newness

2011-06-02T17:12:00.001-06:00

This year continues to be banner in that new found trails keep popping up. Nice drop down from the west trail on Animas over to Sailing Hawks and it has some of the best ridge views in town...too bad I did not take pictures.

Also the signage continues to be added all over Durango. What we once called Sailing Hawks, is now a network called Dalla Mountain Park, with signed trails complete with maps at every intersection. I've heard Test Tracks....errrrrr Overend Mountain Park has the same. I suspect the gulch soon will get these new ones?

Cross Dressing

2011-06-02T09:43:00.000-06:00

The Moots Psyclo-X is no longer a virgin bike as I took it up to Log Chutes yesterday. It's a great option to have as I rode the singletrack around FLC, dropped down the Nature Trail, and then hit Junction Creek Road and the trails up there. It's the perfect mating of road biking and mountain biking.

The pictures are a bit blurry, but I think I got the camera dialed in for next time. White skies of late due to fires in Arizona, and the camera had been set for the high ISO setting, which makes things a tad blurry.

The bike is great and the frame is a bit larger than I originally though, as Moots talked me into the next size larger. I really like the position.

So with the title of this blog, I fully expect this to be one of the top three posts on this site of all time with regards to hits from the internet. I titled one "Missionary Style" last fall for a ride on Missionary Ridge, and that gets a ton of traffic, and surprisingly the "Ditch Weed" post brought in a lot others. I'm not trying to increase the volume of perverts and stoners, but I find it amusing that people google stuff like that.

Parabolic Weekend

2011-05-31T09:34:00.005-06:00

Whew, what a weekend! I signed up for both the 1/2 Burner and 1/2 Growler, with the first day being a 25k trail run, that finished at exactly 16-miles and nearly 2700-ft of climbing. The 1/2 Growler finished with nearly 35 miles and 4350-ft of climbing the following day.

I've been training for the 1/2 Burner by running at least one day a week, mostly up on Raiders Ridge and around the College. If I was able to fit in one other day of running, it would usually be half that loop. So with that, the fitness for the Burner was there anaerobically, but not in the joints or feet and it showed. I started out the Burner actually very well as there was a lot of climbing right off the bat and it included some rocky, chunky sections that was similar to the ridge. By the time though we hit Broken Shovel, that fast smooth downhill sections proved to be my toughest challenge as the joint strength was just not there to keep pace with others. I hit the first aid station ahead of a lot of people, but spent the rest of the day getting passed, but I did finish under 3 hours and I was happy with the result. The Garmin showed some interesting numbers as I spent 1 hour 45-minutes in the anaerobic zone, out of my entire 2:57 finish time. I was spent when I finished, and when I made it back to the IOOF Park, I grabbed a beer and vomited it not 15-minutes after finishing it! I grabbed a sandwich at The Bean, went back to the motel and slept for a couple hours....and found my un eaten sandwich snuggled up to the pillow when I awoke. Somehow, I downed it when I awoke but left crumbs all over the bed.

Waking up for the mountain bike race the following day was a chore, because I really hurt bad. The Burner started at 7:30-AM and I assumed the Growler started at the same time. Alarm went off at 6:00AM and I lay there contemplating whether I actually wanted to do the race. I checked the i-phone for last minute information and freaked out when I saw the Growler start for 7:00. So I got up quickly and scrambled to the start. Got to the back of the pack and the FooMTB handlebar bell fell off, so I had a last minute scramble to mess with that. Gun shots went off and I could barely pedal. I got dropped on the pavement somewhere around the KOA as my legs did not want to spin the 34x21 muy rapido. Looked to be a couple hundred people in front of me - doh!

I told myself to just ride the 1/2 Growler and not race it, so I tucked away any silly yo-yo instincts with other racers. I figured I'd be super courteous, pass when and where necessary and pull to the side for others when necessary. I started slowly and felt horrible, but after an hour or so the legs did come back and much to the opposite of the Burner, I spent the last part of the day passing people instead of being passed like at the Burner. So I felt good and finished feeling well. I was a bit suprised too when I saw the result, it looks like I finished 18th overall and 2nd place on the singlespeed. In a weird bit of irony though, I only had 5 minutes of anaerobic activity and finished better than the Burner result with all that effort!

I rode the Moots Mooto-X YBB and it was dialed in perfectly with the divine ratio gearing. I've been racing Moots since 2006 and they truly make the most dependable race bike out there. The White Brothers Fork was set up smooth and plush thanks to the IMV control. My usual Hammer Nutrition in the bottles, of which the Moots has 3 mounts for and they were held in place by my trusty King Cages - made here in Durango! Rode my strong and light Stans No Tubes racing wheelset and had no worries running tubeless - absolutely no worries. I always chuckle when I see others flatted on the side of the trail and most times I see they are not running the leader in tubeless technology - Stans! Big Wheel Racing has some awesome sponsors and I truly appreciate their support.

I rolled into town with Dan Durland and another racer and then went to the hotel and showered - that is after I drank a beer and did NOT throw it up this time. Stopped by the finish and spoke to some Crested Butte / Gunny locals as I am working on my honorary citizenship card there. I love Durango, but part of my soul lives in that area to the North. Hoping to see some of those faces at the DDC for sure. But I decided to not wait for the awards and I drove home to meet Jeni at Steamworks while the IH Bike Race was just finishing. Drank some brews and ate a nice dinner and met with some local friends. Good weekend and I hope to be back next year...for who knows....the Full Enchilada?

Enjoy!

2011-05-26T11:12:00.000-06:00

Looks like a fun weekend ahead.

Ditch Weed

2011-05-22T10:58:00.002-06:00

I took the Moots Roadie up to Purgatory on Saturday in lieu of driving down south for Cochiti. The thought of 2 more nights away from home just did not appeal to me, and with a strong racing schedule coming up it was easy to pull the pulg on this "freebie" underground race.

On the return trip, I headed up College Drive and found a bag a marijuana in the bike lane. It was freshly packed so some medicinally deprived individual must have lost this on their return trip from the clinic. This may come as a surprise to many red state readers, but the medical marijuana business in the state of Colorado is quite extensive. Last summer I was at a hotel in Aspen and they had a full row of medical marijuana brochures in the front entryway - next to the usual brochures for white water rafting, guides ATV tours, etc. Big business indeed.

So I grabbed the bag of weed and shoved it my jersey pocket, not sure quite what to do with it.

I contemplated calling the police, but really would one do that if they found say a pharmacy bottle of valium on the side of the road? Nope, you would probably just return it to the pharmacy and hope they could track down the intended owner. Besides, not all policeman are on the up and up and the thought of this being an evidence plant on an individual did not sit well with me.

So I thought to myself, do I scroll through my list of local friends and try to recall whom the stoners are and give them a gift bag? It did seem like a semi logical thing to do, but it also would be illegal on a couple of levels. I did not own the property - I found it on the side of the road and giving to another person is not my call. Then of course giving a controlled substance to another person would in fact constitute a crime of illegal distribution. So this option was no longer in the running.

Perhaps I could destroy the bag of weed. But it again is not my property, so that would be akin to finding another's lost cell phone for example - and then taking a hammer to it before throwing it in the dumpster.

Another option would be to smoke it all, or perhaps make some brownies. As interesting as that sounds, really I have enough vices and no need to add any more. Besides if I really wanted to consume medical marijuana I could just get a prescription and not do it illegally. God bless America!

When I got home, I noticed that the odor of the marijuana was really strong, so I placed another baggie around the one above....and I could still smell it. Danny came over to drop off the lights from his KTR excursion and we spoke in the front entryway and the odor wafted all the way to the front. Skunk weed indeed.

I've found some interesting things when out and about before. Wads of cash, a huge dildo on a trail one time, a monkey wrench at the end of an airport runway (did it fall off the plane?), underwear, etc - but never a big old bag of weed - although I've spotted paraphernalia before. One time at a roadside motel in Kansas, a huge stash of gay porn dropped from behind a picture on the wall over the bed when I inadvertently hit it while stretching.

I decided to call the Durango Healing Center and let them know of my discovery. The girl at the other end of the phone was almost incredulous when I told her I would be right down to drop off the weed with the hopes that they could find the owner. Surely they sold a bag of Blue Dream sometime mid afternoon and they could track down the owner.

So that I did - I stopped in dropped off the bag and got not only a thank you and congratulations on my honesty from the girl, but the doctor and another gentleman came out and expressed the same thing. I was a tad surprised though at the reception. State law recognizes medical marijuana as a legitimate business, and returning a lost product from a consumer should be relatively commonplace for any business. I wasn't looking to commit a crime and if I had wanted to smoke marijuana I could do it legally by making my own appointment there with a doctor, so there was no need or desire to consume this found stash on my own.

I just hope they find the proper owner and do not try to resell it.

A bigger loop

2011-05-20T12:58:00.001-06:00

Whew, it's been a long week. Just got back from a big loop around the state with some time over along the front range including a deluge in Boulder and a last minute trip to Aspen. Brought the bike, but the weather changed the plans. Last weekend before I left it was to complete a better loop through Log chutes after doing High Point on the CT. Rode there Saturday and then took the roadie Moots up to Needles. Really wanted to go high, but when temps are 75 in town, it only means 55 at best up top. That makes for a chill descent.

Some pics from the week, in no particular order.

Water fall will driving up Red Mountain.

A good use for old Ergon grips thanks to duct tape.

I may need a new pair of the GPX grips soon.

Hope to see more of this on the weekend.

I signed up for the Cochiti 100 but I'm having a hard time convincing myself to leave. I left Monday AM and got home Thursday PM, so why the heck would I want to leave again on the weekend? I do like Cochiti though....

New Project....

2011-05-09T13:58:00.000-06:00

Sort of a blurry cell-phone picture, but it will do.

Ancient Pathways

2011-05-08T10:26:00.001-06:00

A good sign that you have been exercising a lot is when you hit Saturday just exhausted. With the trail running and biking through last week, I had to sleep in late Saturday and didn't get out for a trail ride until 2:30 or so. I wanted a good climb though, so I pieced a fairly remarkable path, that with some work, could be a mini epic.

The reward for the new loop is a view at the cell towers on Missionary Ridge. I started in Skyridge and road up the new Skyline Trail and then took the spur over to the water tower up at the top of Timberline Drive. From there it was Florida Road over to the Pioneer Trail head near Edgemont. As I climbed up Missionary Ridge Road, I noticed a faint trail off to the right just past the USFS gate, so I followed it.

It was faint, and fluffy as I made first tracks on it this year. But it climbed nicely, and despite all of the undergrowth and some downfall, it was a really nice and fun trail.

This was also the first ride on my new wheels. Part of the delay in riding on Saturday was that I found a broken spoke on the Crossmax 29s. I love those wheels for riding because the fat spokes can take a beating from rocks kicked up, as the wheelset has several bent spokes. It will need a pretty good rebuild to get that set going again because it's just not the broken spoke, but perhaps 6 bent ones as well that need replacing. So this gave me the option of trying out the new set.

I got the Stans Rims via our team pro-deal, along with some ridiculously cheap SRAM X.9 hubs, also via our team pro-deal cost (around $60 for the hubset). Nate Berg built me up two sets actually - one with Revolutions, and the other with Aerolites. I paid him in beer of which he was quite happy.

Nate used a hot gun to remove the stickers. I never did see what they looked like as the hubs went direct to him, but he talked me into the stealth look.

I rode the Aerolite set up front and the Rev set up in back, only because those had tires mounted up on them prior to the wheel changeout. I had been running super heavy Armadillo 2.2 Captains on those Crossmax 29s. so immediately the bike felt ridiculously light. I did not weigh it, but I assume 2-2.5-lbs were dropped. But with that came the penalty - this is not the wheelset to go thrashing around on Raiders Ridge or bombing down the rocky section of Animas. So I had to ride with caution on this set and the Crossmark tires do help in that regard as they certainly are not in control as much as the Captains.

Most of the trail looked like this above, with deadfall in the way, but most of it was rideable.

There were great stands of Aspen and 4 or 5 ponds on the route, with a really nice section of large white limestone rock that reminded me of Kig of the Mountain - really technical in this part.

The downside of course was the undergrowth that scarred my legs silly. This trail has not been ridden much in the last decade.

And it shredded my new team shorts as well. A sad rule with me is that when I put on new riding clothes they get trashed that very first ride.

The top is what killed this trail, and while not shown here - the death of this trail was a clear cut of about 4 football fields near the cell towers. They must have cut this as an emergency response to the Missionary Ridge Fire in attempt to make a fire break and also protect the towers. They cut the trees in place and just left it as dead fall. But that of course leaves opportunity for ride overs and bridges if anyone ever wanted to revive this route. All in all it was a 20-mile ride with 4k of climbing from my house. Missionary Ridge has been neglected too long Durango,and while I appreciate all of the new trails going up in and around town, let's not let these routes disappear into a point of no return.

Good night Austin, TX (wherever you are)

2011-05-04T10:29:00.001-06:00

Weather rebounded just perfect here in Durango after the wet snow on Sunday. By Tuesday it was shorts and sleeveless weather and I rode Animas, Sailing Hawks, and then took the first climb of the year up Chapman Hill. I did not think I was ready for that, but the new divine ratio gearing worked perfect. The Moots is racking up miles which is good, and with the later start to race season for me, I'm glad not to have distractions. I will miss 12 hours of Cortez again this weekend, and I have no regrets - none whatsoever. I'm hoping to check out Missionary Ridge this weekend, but it will be for the climb only as I doubt the deadfall has been cleared on the singletrack. Perhaps Hermosa or Jones may be in the cards as well, who knows.

The new Ipod came and since it is smaller, its battery source lasts shorter. I now ride longer than the battery life. I have not tried the Iphone, but perhaps that has a longer battery for music. Maybe I'll try it out for a run later this week and see if Endomondo works this time as it stopped working on the Blackberry.

The big Cochiti 110 is coming up and I look forward to it, with the new addition of Killer Switchbacks to make it even tougher. I've been running for the Sage Burner and Growler Race weekend as well. Good times a head and it's not even summer yet!

Almost High

2011-05-02T12:10:00.002-06:00

I've had to adapt my schedule the last few weekends, and have taken the last 3 Sundays off from riding, either for rest, rain, or more recently snow. That has just made the days prior and post more critical in getting some good exercise, which was the case for this weekend. The forecast did predict the cooler temperatures and possibility of snow, so I either ran or rode each day the week prior, with the 10-mile Raiders Ridge running loop finally done in reverse late Friday. That turned out to be quite a challenge as the big climb came after ~5-miles, and it's like going up stairs with all the rock steps. Really fun though and the views are amazing.

Saturday was graduation for FLC, and Ryan made Magna Cum Laude so we had plans to meet up after he went through the ceremony. I got out and rode as much as I could, including the Colorado Trail-Dry-Fork-Hoffheins loop. From there I went up as far as I could but did not make it to the High Point as there are snow drifts at around ~9k. I dropped back down and then tried to climb up the downhill single track going through the Junction Creek campgrounds and after a short hike-a-bike to the horse corral, I hooked up Log Chutes to the new favorite climb to Animas Overlook and the awesome downhill descent buried in back there. With cutting though Sailing Hawks, a nice 50-mile, 6k of climbing ride all from town.

We got about 1.5 inches of wet snow on Sunday which will be gone by Monday afternoon as temps will be back up to the 70s. It's nice to get the moisture and the riding has been primo to start the season. Can't wait to get up even higher.

Bridges

2011-04-28T06:12:00.001-06:00

So when you find a trail full of wooden bridges over dry land, you think that when it descends to the river there might be a bridge there.

Nope.....thigh deep crossing made for a very cold trip back home.

Doh!

In town run around

2011-04-24T09:22:00.001-06:00

Hit the in town trails with the threat of rain that did not appear until late in the evening. Started up Skyline for the 3rd trip up there of the week, as it has become the go to warm up climb. It is also the go to run and not just bike. If you loop in the entire Ridge and then trails around FLC it's exactly 10-miles and 1800-ft of climbing, on rocky techy trails that are fun to run on.

Saturday was very social as this time of year everyone is riding the same stuff in and around town. Ran into Chris, James, and then Rob and some of his friends when I did my usual Test Tracks loop backwards after the Raiders ride. Came back and watched criterium that FLC put on, here their women pretty much dusted the field with one lone CU Buffalo hanging on.

Good times in Durango, and I've been told the CT, Hoffheins, and even High Point are open. Hermosa should be open as well, and it's not even May yet. Good thing it rained all last night.....

And then came the wind...

2011-04-17T21:38:00.002-06:00

So the first Durango Gravel Grinder (DGG) is under the belt, all 158-miles and 10,372-ft of climbing! We had 2 people complete the 158-miles - myself and Steve Reiter, and 4 people make the 115-miler which came out to near 9k of climbing! Actually, 3 of those four finishers actually did 120-miles due to a wrong turn - but Jeni was their navigator and she pulled them through. Congrats to Jeni for rocking the course and making a good finish! Of the 7 finishers, 3 rocked singlespeed!

It was an awesome day because the weather was just spot on - we crested CR 125 as the sunrise came up - just perfect timing! The ride starts out on the western loop - which we decided to call the Deer Loop due to all of the friendly ungulates along the route - and the eastern loop we call the Dog Loop due to all the darn dogs along that side of the route. And it was here that the wind came on strong and slowed things down. Steve and I finished right around 11 hours, but since it was only 2 of us, we spent some time at the feed stations (convenience stores) - much more than we needed to. This is a route that sub 10-hours is probably the norm when competitive fields show up. We timed the La Plata County Road maintenance schedule just perfect as the magnesium chloride has been freshly applied and those dirt roads were just insanely fast. I rode the Bianchi San Jose single speed of course and with the "system" wheels - trimmed down road tire inside of a cross tire - that heavy wheel combo is also bomb proof. The only downside was the ridiculous head winds in mid afternoon - especially on the rollers on CR 510, that was just tortuous!

Fun times, I love the course and it reminded me of the first San Ysidro Dirty Century when only 3 people showed up - Mike Mangan, Nathan Franke and myself - and only one finished. Now a few years later that course rocks between 70-90 people depending on the year and weather. I fully expect the DDG to be similar.

I just wanna ride, you plonker

2011-04-11T21:36:00.006-06:00

Some time it just needs to stop with the bike creaks and perhaps soon I'll get a new Ipod since the other one did not fully survive the Maytag (although it did intermittently for nearly a half year).

Plug in the tunes and it makes you a better bike mechanic. Or at least a more tolerable one.

Catlike helmets look great at the front, but weird on the side. Perhaps I need a larger helmet and I did not know that I have Homer Simpson head? I knew there was some cranial mass there, but shoot that lid looks tiny.

Specialized helmets kinda work the opposite though and there really isn't anything uglier than a Spez helmet. But a creaky helmet is even more bothersome, and that is what has become of the black Spez. Wish I was a Packers fan because the cheesehead look beats the best of the peloton.

To the Siberian Pine

2011-04-11T10:43:00.007-06:00

"What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth.... The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots.... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black."

"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!"

- Yuri Gagarin, first human to travel into outer space.

Fifty years ago this evening, a young Cosmonaut went to bed and most likely did not sleep a wink. The next morning he boarded the Vostok, which I believe in Russian simply means "hermetically sealed Volkswagen Beetle with a rocket attached to it." The Vostok took him on an orbit of the Earth for a little under 2 hours time and when he touched down our final frontier had been visited.

In honor of Gagarin, I decided to do a bit of exploring on my own. While my new horizons were limited to terra firma, I could at least explore new-to-me trails and that I did. I went out to Log Chutes and climbed trail to FR 171 and reached the Animas Outlook. I had previously heard of a rim trail that descended from there and I caught it back down to the valley - overlooking Falls Creek down below. The trail was fast and fun, but at one point I saw a mountain lion dash across the trail, obviously spooked. It is at times like this, that you are so thankful for fast DOWNHILL trail.

The trail continued on and it got very steep and rocky and then back down to the steep road at Barker's Corner. It was a bit chilly, so I went home from there.

The ride terrain is opening up here fast, and I got my picture in the Telegraph last week while up on Animas Mountain. The destruction from logging on Log Chutes is not as bad as it first appeared and just a bit of clean-up will clear the trail of dead fall. We might have to venture toward Missionary Ridge soon, but I suspect a ton of dead fall there from the high winds of late.

Note: This photo is the exact opposite perspective of the valley than the photo in the Myths post, and the mesa just above my saddle is Animas Peak, of which I have yet to post a 2011 photo, but have scaled 3 times thus far.

Divinity

2011-04-05T09:04:00.001-06:00

Like the roll of the astragali the weather here at times seems almost random. With brutal forecasts of rain and snow, the locals offered up sacrifice to the great god Kennebec.

The benevolent god responded and deflected the storm just north so that the ski area got snow and we continued to ride.

With the gearing successfully converted, I did my best to contribute to the cause.

And with a new forecast predicting an even bigger storm we now we have to do it all over again. Here's hoping the knuckle bones fall in our favor.

Myths

2011-04-03T18:48:00.002-06:00

There are certain beliefs in life that we are told to hold dear, and one might actually at times believe in their existence, perhaps one can't imagine the inverse, but yet when challenged, you might come to actually realize the fallacy in the existence.

We've been told for years that Beatles are the truest representation of British rock-n-roll, leaders of a new genre, but yet after seeing the full careers of The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Lead Zeppelin and Pink Floyd you realize it's nothing more than a very far fetched exaggeration. Lest we forget Iron Maiden, Queen and of course The Clash/Joe Strummer.

Ride, enjoy life and carry on. Find those reasons that prevent you from doing so and call them mythical.

Cruising the hood

2011-03-28T19:09:00.001-06:00

Not a very productive day working in the home office as we found a lot of distractions and had a lot of visitors since the team kits came in. So we headed out for a ride late in the day, and kind of had the same thing, more social time than ride time. But how can you complain?

Jeni riding the Carver bike.

We hit up the climb on Lion's Den and then did the college loop.

Good dry trails in town!

We ran into Chris Herting of 3D Racing and he showed us his new tricked out fat tire bike. These are just exploding in popularity here as people rode in town all through the winter - but get this Chris has only ridden his on dirt.

Chris pulled out all the stops as he usually does on this bike. He elevated the chain stays so you can run belt drive - he had this singlespeed before he put gears on today. Notice the cool Ska Brewing bottlecap?

He built his wheels symmetric, and not dished like Surly did, and he drilled out the holes on his rims to make it lighter. But even with gears and the Avid mechanicals the bike weighs 32-lbs.

He's working on a suspension fork for the frame too.

There is a big future for the bikes - more than just for winter riding. Russel from Durango Cyclery apparently rode his on a bike packing trip along the California Coast from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara.

I've added this to the wish list.

Getting dirty

2011-03-28T15:17:00.002-06:00

Hit up the local trails again this weekend and had a nice mini-epic with Ryan, Danny and Joey. Started out at Magpies and rode the College, Gulch, and down Carbon Junction back into town and then over to Animas for Sailing Hawks and out to Falls Creek, where Ryan knew of a nice down hill trail into the Hermosa Valley. Lots of fun and Falls Creek is a good place to head these days as the traffic in the Gulch is pretty high.

I got my new downhillers jersey and rode in my baggies that I wear more as shorts than for riding gear. Pretty cool stuff!

The switchbacks at 10th street is my usual route when finishing up a ride.

Test Tracks is still partially open, but soon once Slimy gulch dries up the whole network will be ridable.

Out for more today as the skies are blue and the trails are calling! But come Friday, we will have all of Animas Mountain and the Gulch opened as the BLM is lifting the seasonal closures. Wahoo! I need me my Animas Mountain!

Going Reto...

2011-03-22T21:28:00.004-06:00

Circa 2007....

Circa 2011

Still ti.....and Assos fleece knickers are still durable even when you go cheap and buy ugly colors.

Inventory

2011-03-20T10:31:00.001-06:00

With the trails now open it was time to scout out what is open at the present time. There are some wet spots to avoid, but by next weekend everything should be good to go. I hit up Horse Gulch first and rode the meadow and Raider's Ridge.

I dropped down and picked up Powerline and all of the College loop including Lion's Den is good to go.

I went over to Animas Mountain and did one of my favorite rides on Sailing Hawks. I like to call it "little Flagstaff" as it reminds me of Oldham Trail.

No mud here, and dry all the way through.

I tried a new route over to Log Chutes on a private road across from Barker Corner. It is steep, steep, steep and the 32x19 really hurt, but once up there I found new-to-me singletrack that took me to Log chutes proper. A bit muddy on the dirt road portion, but not on the singletrack as even though it's soggy, the pine needle fall keeps you from digging in.

But I was saddened to see the destruction from the tree clearing at Log Chutes. The two trails that head over to Junction Creek Road are gone - covered in tree fall from the logging. I can only hope they will clear this up. This clearing was Trails 2000 approved so maybe we will get these back. Log Chutes is where I head for solitude, and the loss here would be significant.

So I went back the way I can and got a rocking descent to the bottom, where I ran in Rod Barker of the Strater Hotel and we chatted a bit. Super nice guy, and he runs a classy operation there.

Then it was onto Falls Creek and if you know the trails out there, there is an awesome loop that drops you nearly down to the water fall by Zink's place.

Red earth trails remind me of Sedona.

And true to it's name, Falls Creek had some falls flowing.

But it was tough on the gearing.

I hit a high point on the burn area from the Missionary Ridge fire and got a great view of the Hermosa Valley.

And then back to the Meadow for some super fast cruising.

I went back over to Animas Mountain and finished the Sailing Hawks loop, and then headed over to Test Tracks, or now known as Overend Park. The best access is up Ella Vita Court and up to the Hog Back. The north sides just are too wet to ride right now. And with temps in the low 60s, things just are not freezing.

Hit the Buckled Bridge and then over to 10th Street Trail and around the College again for an awesome day in the saddle and another in town epic.

I moved here just for stuff like this as I really enjoy just riding right out of the garage. No more packing the car at night for the early morning drive up to Santa Fe like we did 4 seasons ago. With some sun light and continued warm temps we'll have ~100-miles in town open really soon. Now, if they can just open up Animas Mountain to the top!

Ready....Set.....Go!

2011-03-19T10:06:00.001-06:00

Singletrack in town is open!

Patience pays, and now for the reward!

Week in pictures

2011-03-14T11:11:00.002-06:00

Had a bit of travel up North for work and took off on a blue bird day with a drive over some snowy passes.

Made it up to The Boat and hung out downtown for a while. Pretty cool when you have ski jumps located down town. The Disney music blaring from Howelson Hill was odd - as I strolled downtown Steamboat, all I could here was Goofy singing songs that end up getting stuck in your head.

Made it back home and road the Steamboat born and bread roadie machine, and then ran on the feet.

It's getting warmer here, but I'm a bit reluctant to give up the Pactimo Thermal Jacket right now. I'd rather ride unzipped and sleeves rolled up to prepare for cool temps up higher and the wind blast on the descent. I road up to Endlich Mesa on Saturday and it was a bit cool (and sloppy) coming back.

But things have dried out all over town, and I rode the cross bike through the Gulch and later on also over to Falls Creek.

Singletrack!

First tracks and a bit rough rolling, but I'm back on dirt!

The Bianchi beats down mud, dirt, and miles.

Flat track out here, but you can really fly, and with the rigid cross fork you have to pay attention or you can go over the bars.

Then after that it was out to Perin's Peak State Park.

Legs are thrashed from a tough weekend, and Jeni began painting the house interior. She broke open the barbecue this weekend, and it's looking like great dirty adventures right out the door are almost here!

Change of Seasons 2011

2011-03-06T10:01:00.005-07:00

The snow is melting fast and the trails are opening up in pieces. I've been able to get some single track in on the running sessions, and scout out even more as we do some hiking. The beauty of living up on the mesa also means we get to walk singletrack when we want to dine or drink beer, and it's a chance to check the status - which changes daily.

The plan this year is to bring in the mountain biking more naturally, and not force it like in years past. Committing to early season races only makes you travel to extreme limits to find dirt in preparation, or do mind-numbing repeated loops like those races offer. I've contemplated riding up 10th street nature trail, and coming down 8th, like in years past, but it doesn't really make sense. The road bike and cross bike both offer up great adventures here in the La Platas, and if it gets boring I can always come back and do a run. That was the case for Saturday with a climb up to Mayday + the Wildcat Loop to Nighthorse Lake. I contemplated a roll-out for another loop from town, but found the dirt calling me for a run.

The other part that I always find challenging this time of year is the temperatures. I can dress for success much better when it's 25-40F, but the 40-50F window is a bit difficult. Wind block and wool takes care of cold weather, but it's hard to have full body wind block at the warmer temps as it makes you sweat on the climbs - and you left behind the wool! It's strange to say, but I much prefer riding in 30-35F sometimes.

The mountain bikes are calling me for maintenance and rebuilding for the up coming season however, and my two shop cats are just itching to get in the garage and help out. Looks like it's time to start turning wrenches. Meow!

It seems like I just blinked and the first week of March went by! We should be riding in town by next weekend with some wet spots, and fully dry by the following barring change in weather. And of course now that means it will snow this week...

Cool runnings

2011-03-04T10:19:00.002-07:00

I'm getting this running thing down. The cardio fitness has been there from all the biking and skiing, but it's taken a while to harden the joints. Things are feeling good, and with warm weather I'm even hitting a bit of dirt along the route and both the 8th street and 10th street nature trails are bone dry. This route started down Bread Express and 32nd over to the River Trail and then skirting downtown up on 10th street trail. From there it was a nice loop around the college and golf course, and finished off with some hills in the hood.

Soon Skyline to Raiders will be open and I'll have my favorite dirty and techy run at my disposal.

Since it was Pint Night, Jeni and I then walked downtown and met two sets of friends - the usual suspects and my ol buddy Jerry from high school who is in town with his company doing some work out in Ignacio.

Jeni and I got back before 10, but I got around 20-miles on the feet yesterday and finally got some blisters. Same foot that I got the blisters on at the Alley, but this time between the toes.

Keep moving, and harden the @#$% up!

Rolling skinny wheels accross the land

2011-03-01T10:24:00.002-07:00

I've been riding the Moots Vamoots CR roadie of late around the county and as one might suspect, it's not really the thing you take pictures of. Last weekend we battled the weather, or more precisely the forecasts of bad weather. With warnings of 70% change of rain and snow it made it undesirable to venture far from home, so I road out and back to Falls Creek and then did the Baker's Bridge loop. I was not really in the shape to climb as I ran ~ 90-minutes on Friday and the legs were pretty sore, so it was base miles at around ~50 total.

Sunday I had grander aspirations all while looking at the skies - I wanted to do a century ride, but on the ride out of town I felt really slow and did not figure it out until I turned at Bondad to Ignacio and then the speed really went up. I flew into Ignacio on a massive tailwind, and it was one of those magic carpet rides that you knew sooner or later you'd have to pay for.

I could have taken 172 back into town, but that would be right into the wind, so I went with my original plan through Columbus and on the climb up to Helen's I hit a blizzard. No wind, as the foothills sheltered the wind, but the higher elevation made it very wet and white. On the climb up and over I caught another rider, a racer for Ft. Lewis College and we chatted a bit. I told him to take off on the descent as there was no way I'd keep up with him on the SS roadie back on Florida Road. After coming down Florida and watching things dry up, it got windy as I got closer to town. I contemplated doing a valley loop to make it a nice 100-miles, but the wind was strong so I bailed at 76 and was plenty wiped. In fact the climb up College just about killed me.

The photo above is from Dove Creek and I've been contemplating a dirt ride, of which this is local enough to hit. But I have to admit, as much as I like dirt, I like riding from home even more. I just don't care to travel to rides. Gonna be warm the next few days, so who knows!