The Once A Year Punch In the Face

Ever learn your lesson the hard way?  Of course you have.  We all do.  But what lessons do you seem to have to learn the hard way regularly?

Backstory: I learned a couple years ago about the virtue of arm warmers.  In particular, I love SmartWool brand arm warmers.  And it's been "arm warmer season" now for pretty much two months.  So I've put them on quite a few times already.  But like last year and the year before, at some point, the inevitable happens....

You see, if you get in a hurry putting them on, you'll try to pull them up a little too fast.  And you're usually looking at what you're doing, and pulling them up fast once they get near the shoulder means you're likely to let it slip...and BLAM.  You punch yourself right in the nose.  Not hard enough to do damage, but in my case it seems like it's always hard enough to make my eyes water. 

So, arm warmers are awesome.  Just be careful with the installation.  The world is dangerous enough without senseless violence that could be avoided if we all just take our time putting our arm warmers on.  And by all means, if you're going to learn this lesson, try learning it just once, not every year like SOME people I know.

Hell, and the freezing and whatnot

So I'm normally the guy that laughs at people who get stuck in the grass after it's been especially wet.  Unfortunately, today I could only laugh at myself.  Ashley had to be at church early, so me and the kids came separately.  I was "on time" for church, which means cutting it kind of close, but still, we were there in time to get inside long before the music stopped.  But it was a big day at church, and the parking lot appeared to be already bulging when I got there.  And I was in the van, which is kind of large.  So when I saw a spot where I could back in on the grass and not be in a tight parking space nor in anyone's way, I decided to jump in it right quick.  Only it was downhill just a touch and it was REALLY soft due to recent rain.  I felt it the moment I backed in, but it was too late.  Just started spinning.

Ugh.  Normally I would have not worried too much about it and just gone to services and waited until most of the parking lot was empty afterward and dealt with it then.  But today we had baseball at 2pm in Pittsboro, so we needed to be gone right when church ended to have any time to grab food at a drive-thru and get there in time for Zach to warm up.  So instead of going to services, I went and found Ashley and had her pull me out with her Pilot after services started.  By some stroke of luck I did have a tow strap in the van, but didn't have anything to attach it with.  But I used some bike rack parts on one end and random piece of metal on the other and made it work.  But it still took a good 15 minutes and my shoes were pretty gross from the mud, so we went ahead and just went and sat down to eat lunch and then went to baseball.

That's a little bad luck, but also something I should have known better to do to begin with.  Just like this past Friday night, when I took Kevin and Zach out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant.  We ordered, ate, and then when the bill came I realized I had NO MONEY.  Somehow I had forgotten my wallet.  Fortunately they were quite understanding and I was able to call them with my credit card number when I got home.  Which was also kind of dumb, since I actually do KNOW my American Express number and could have just given them that on site.  It's been a pretty mediocre weekend.

But that brings us to the hell freezing thing.  For the longest time I've said I had no urge to do a long running race, but I've found I have almost no running motivation these days, even though I really need to do it to help my mountain biking as well as for the cross training benefits.  I used to run both for those reasons and because I thought at some point I'd learn to swim and work on being a triathlete.  But I've mostly given up on the triathlon idea, which has led to less running motivation.  So I figured a good way to get some motivation back might be to run a half marathon.

Yeah, a half marathon.  You know the joke...every time someone says they ran a half marathon I think to myself "now there's someone who knows how to do things half-way."  So soon that will be me, too.  Well, "soon" is a relative term...I don't think I'm going to do a race until late January or early February, but it's time to plan it, anyway.  And thanks to Shelley, I have a time to shoot for...1:57.  That's going to be tough!

Leadville Trail 100 Race Report

Wow.  Just...WOW.

That was one epic day.  It started with getting up at 4am so we could get to the head of the corral when it opened at 5am.  That went as planned, which was good as our corral was a full half the race and that meant there were probably around 1,000 people in it!  The race started promptly at 6:30am, and it was on!

Alan and I moved through traffic down the paved hill pretty well, but man did things stack up on the first gravel road and then even worse on the first climb.  But I settled in and did my thing and Alan set sail ahead of me and I didn't see him for a long while.  Everything was going quite as planned until I got about 15 miles in and was starting to climb the back side of the famous Powerline descent.  All the sudden my bike just started to lock up...I couldn't pedal!  I jumped off, flipped the bike over (which requires removing my GPS, which I accidentally STOPPED and didn't realize it until 13 minutes later, ugh!), and started diagnosing.  Turns out the nut that holds the cassette (the big cluster of gears on the back tire) had worked loose somehow.  I've ridden THOUSANDS of miles and this has only ever happened to me TWICE.  But still, that's something I should have checked and didn't, and it cost me.

I did not have the special tool you need to tighten that, so I made due and got it as tight as I could and took off after a few minutes, scared it was just going to happen again.  But I made it to the 27 mile aid station (Pipeline outbound), where I had been smart enough to leave a complete wheelset, with the world's most awesome crew, Matt Kimel.  We swapped to my backup rear wheel in a matter of seconds, restocked the fuel, and off I went. 

Things went very well from there through the Twin Lakes outbound aid station and to the start of the Columbine Mine climb.  That's ten miles out and the climb is about 2,800 feet of elevation gain to 12,600 feet above sea level, which is well above tree line.  Let's just say that riding that after riding 40 more miles of the course did NOT go nearly as well as the training rides!  Wow, that was brutal.  I did see Alan coming down as I was still climbing, which was cool.  Somehow I missed my friend Tammy, who is a Pro and did very well today, too.  Kind of bummed about that, but I must have had my head down grinding pretty hard when she went by.  By the time I passed Alan I was up closer to the top and was walking the steep and very loose section, so I spotted him and wished him well.

Made it to the top, grabbed some Coke and a few banana pieces from the aid station, and headed back down.  Man, I must have passed 50 people on that descent!  Generally speaking, I rode the descents within my limits and fairly safely, but I still passed TONS of people on every one.  This race attracts a lot of people that really don't do much intense mountain biking, and my riding with my local group of buddies at crazy places like Pisgah National Forest has prepared me pretty well for going downhill pretty fast.  So that was fun.  It wasn't as fun watching those same people pass me back on the next climb, though.  I need to work on that!

Every climb after Columbine was pretty tough.  The legs just didn't have the power any more.  But they kept going (with some amount of walking here and there) and I slipped my time goals just a little at each station, but not too bad for the first 2/3 of the race.  It was that last third that hosed me!  But to be fair, there was a HUGE wind this afternoon that made a section of the course MUCH slower than it would have otherwise been, and was at a point where it just sapped energy like crazy.  It should have been a soft downhill to flat to soft uphill paved section that in a group would have been easily done at 18MPH or more.  But instead we were reduced to grinding more like 12MPH.  And it hurt.

Then comes the Powerline climb.  Let's just say I had to walk almost every inch of the uphill parts.  I felt like I could have ridden some of the easier parts between the steep climbs, but every time I tried I had the strangest cramps up my inner thighs.  I've never had those before, and it was like FIRE shooting up my legs.  It only happened when I tried to pedal and walking was fine, so I kept walking and hoped something good would happen, with little expectation that it actually would.

And around this time I was doing all this walking, I started running time calculations.  Oh crap, making the 12 hour time for the silver belt buckle award (and being recognized as a "finisher" at all) was looking quite unlikely.  Especially since there was still one long climb left to another descent, and then a three mile climb back into town for the finish.  I was really worried I couldn't pedal with any power due to the cramps, which meant climbing was going to be walking, and there was too much left.

But I took some more salt supplements, kept drinking fluids (water and my nutrition drink that also had electrolytes in it), and kept moving forward.  One thing I had in my favor was I had a fifteen minute descent for my legs to rest and get fluids before that next climb, and apparently that was enough.  I wasn't fast, but I was able to pedal at about twice the same speed I could have walked up that hill.  As I worked through the woods to that last descent, the math still didn't look good.  I was pretty positive for the last hour and a half that I'd never make it.  But thanks to all the support from all my friends and family and coaches and even random people from the Internet that I've never even met, I just knew that as long as my legs would pedal, I was going to keep going.  And I did.

And that descent was fast again, and there was a four mile stretch before that last climb that was probably a soft downhill, because I averaged around 20MPH for that stretch.  As I neared the end of that stretch to start the final climb, I realized I was going to make it with a few minutes to spare.  That was quite a feeling, but then my thoughts turned to my poor family, crew, and all of you following along at home.  I figured it was going to be nerve-wracking since you guys had no idea I was so close.  Sorry about that.  It wasn't much in my control after a certain point!

But I ground out that final climb, often times with power outputs that WERE very respectable (which was quite shocking to me!) and as I approached that red carpet, I couldn't help but start crying.  The amount of climbing in this race just does something to you.  You swear over and over that current climb will be over around the next bend, only to be presented with plenty more to go.  I like to make sure I know a race course ahead of time, and I really did know this course pretty well, but yet once you're racing and doing that to your body, it affects the mind as well.  So you end up back in that same space from time to time, and that kind of thing accumulates inside somehow.  Plus, I had all that time (probably an hour) when I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it.  Then to find I could, pretty much only 20 minutes from the end, meant a huge release when I finally crossed that line.  Here's a picture at the finish...more good pics to come as the various race picture folks have stuff online:

And here's where I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a lot of folks.  I've mentioned my family once, but I'll do it again...they've put up with a lot of me being gone to train for this.  Amazing support.  Then my coach, Sage Rountree, who made this possible.  Without her, there's just no way I could have done this on my own.  And then there's Tammy Sadle, who was my inspiration from the beginning.  She works at Training Peaks, the site my coach and I use for our main method of communication for workout planning.  She did this race for the first time last year, and they blogged about her effort to raise money for Team First Descents and she did great her first time out.  I followed her progress, but also made a small donation to her fund raising effort, which resulted in her being nice enough to reach out to me via social media.  Seeing how well she did made me want to try it, too.  Happy to say she's a friend now, too!

And then there was Alan Bocko.  Been friends with Alan for many years, but I was pretty sure if I signed up that he'd find a way.  And he did.  And then Matt Kimel, who was cool enough to sign on as our crew for the event, including spending several weeks here in Leadville keeping me company.  You've probably read about our motorcycle adventures already.  LOOK AT MY HANDS! And thanks to Matt's family for letting him do this.  That was a big deal for them, too.  Oh, and my Chapel Hill riding crew...riding with those guys is always fun and challenging.  That crew always has multiple people in it that kick my butt on any given day.  And Santa Cruz for making awesome bicycles!

And then there's all of you folks who donated or even just supported me online.  I owe you so many thanks.  I really didn't want to let you down, and I hope I did you proud.  I thought about every one of you at some point on this long day, I promise.  Thank you all so much for all the kind words of support.  It really means a lot to me.   More pictures and further wrap-up to come...I really should go to bed now.

The big day is almost here!

Well, the big day is almost here.  It's kind of hard to believe, to be honest.  But it's here, and I'm excited!

It's not too late to donate to my fund raising effort if you haven't already.  I'd really like to send a few more young folks with cancer to this very special camp, so please donate to help out if you haven't already!

I feel like all the prep work is done and all that's left is to go have some fun doing some riding.  And then ride some more, and some more, and some more, and a little more.  And then maybe a lot more.  Who knows?  I just know I'm going to give it all I've got to reach the 103+ mile finish line.

If you want to follow along, the race starts at 8:30am EDT (6:30am here in Colorado) tomorrow (Saturday, Aug 11) and you can find a link for living timing at the bottom of this page.  I sort of expect to be through Pipeline 1 (or outbound, as this is an out-and-back course) around 2:30, Twin Lakes 1 (outbound) about 3:30, Twin Lakes 2 (inbound) about 6:30, and Pipeline 2 (inbound) around 7:30.  That would put me at the finish around 10:30 (or about 7pm, EDT).  These are very rough estimates, and there may be a couple more timing stations reporting than this, but I'm less sure about what those splits might be as I'm not completely sure where they are (well, one is likely at the top of Columbine assuming they can get data back from up there, and that would be about 5:45, I'd guess).

Anyway, time to get to bed and get some sleep!

More recon and a review

Took a little trip today to the middle of the LT100 race course.  This was the only part I hadn't yet seen, and is the easiest part of the course.  Took a little doing to figure out a little bit of it, but we've got it now.  There's still one tiny part I haven't ridden, but I'll get it later this week.  I am glad to have seen most of this middle part, though, because it does give me a little faith that I can get this done.

Now for a bit of reflection.  This is a fairly interesting summary:

That's a pretty good 30 days on the mountain bike.  How about my total cycling in the last year?

Holy crap on a cracker!  3,000 miles on a bicycle?  Wow, I am broken or something.  I sure did enjoy a lot of it, I know that.  And most importantly, I think it's prepared me well.  I have the best coach in the world to blame for much of this...Sage Rountree.  But I also have the best family in the entire world who would let me leave the house for a lot more than that 290 hours it took me to get the riding in.  See, it's not like all 290 hours or even most of it was near home...a lot of it required trips or driving to Raleigh or just working on bikes.  But they've helped me pursue this bucket list kind of dream of this crazy huge race in Leadville, and for that I am eternally grateful.  In just a few more days they'll be here to join me, and I can't wait!

Just another day in ... Colorado

So today's workout was to climb Powerline again.  Yay, me!  Or, you know, not.  It's just a few miles, but it's also 1,400' of elevation gain over some of the worst terrain imaginable...huge ruts, loose sandy soil, large loose rocks, etc.  I tried to park a few miles away so I could warm up first, but I came in from the wrong direction for that as there was just nowhere I felt like I could leave my motorcycle safely.  So I parked near the bottom and just took off cold.

Wow, that stunk.  Cold starts at high altitude with large workloads are tough.  But it's not long on the Powerline climb before us mere mortals have to walk no matter what, anyway, so it wasn't too horrible of a situation.  Then it levels out to merely a horrible climb so I started pedaling.  I made it up in about ten minutes less than the first time I did it, so I'm pretty happy with that.  Here's a self-portrait of me at the top:

Then it was time to descend.  The descent is pretty dangerous on Powerline if you aren't careful.  I've been wearing sunglasses for most of my riding out here because the course is so open for the most part and the sun is pretty tough.  And I really prefer to have glasses of SOME kind on when I'm riding for the safety...it's no fun getting bugs or dirt in your eyes when you really need to see!  So I had sunglasses on even though part of this descent is in a wooded area, which meant shadows made things tough to see.  And I missed a rock that was ill-placed such that it somehow took out my rear brake disk.  I didn't crash nor even come close to it, but the best effort I could make to fix what was basically a brake disk in the shape of a taco meant that I got the rear wheel rolling again, but I had no rear brake at all.  Here's a picture of the scrapes on the disk, and trust me, it's very bent:

Now, everyone knows you do most of your braking with the front brake, but on a descent like this, particularly with someone as heavy as me, it's very important to be able to use both.  Since I couldn't, I decided to stop a couple times on the way down to cool the front brake.  Having it go out on me during this descent could be devastating, so I chose to take no chances here.  But I got through it, and got the disk swapped and things appear fine otherwise with the bike, so no worries.  I will probably switch to clear glasses for the rest of my training and the race, though.  It's just what I'm used to.

Later, Matt and I decided to do some motorcycle riding.  First we hit a local trail for some exploration that didn't take long and ended without much interesting to find, and then headed out to ride up Columbine Mine, the biggest climb of my mountain bike race.  It takes you to 12,600' and above tree line, and weather was great this afternoon, so it was a very good ride up.  Here's a picture of us and our bikes and some amazing background scenery:

It was kind of cold up top, so we didn't stick around long.  I need to check the data, but I'm pretty sure I can descend that mountain faster on my bicycle than I can on the motorcycle.  Of course, it's no contest the other way!

We headed back to town and walked over to watch some of the Leadville Boom Days! festivities.  I'm not sure how much of an overriding theme there is, but it's a crazy mix of interesting things culminating in, of all things, burro races on Sunday.  Tonight was some slow motorcycle competition stuff in the street.  What we got to see was a competition they call the "weiner bite."  That's where you have a guy driving a motorcycle with a girl on the back.  They go really slow under a hot dog hanging from a string.  The girl has to bite off as much of the hot dog as she can, but not swallow it.  Then she spits it out and they measure who bit off the most of the hot dog and that's the winner.

Yeah, that was amazing stuff, let me tell you.  But there were a ton of fair food vendors and we had some great "ribbon fries" and brisket.  Sadly, they don't allow open container alcohol even for Boom Days, so I had a sweet tea and we called it a night.  I woke up at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep this morning, so that was plenty of day for me anyway. 

Tempting fate with another day off from adventure!

Okay, so one more reminder...I'm raising money to help young folks with cancer through Team First Descents.  There's just over a week to go and I haven't reached my goal.  Please donate!

Not much to report today.  I was able to scrub most of the black dye off my hands from yesterday using Gojo with two harsh scrub sessions.  Then I went for an easy run around Leadville:

That was kind of a cool map to make, though with Leadville being on a hill, this was like a crazy interval run.  Then I got a shower which thankfully took care of the rest of the dye on my hands.  Otherwise?  It's been a boring day.  Matt and I had some lunch at a very good local Mexican place and have just done some housecleaning around the RV and watched Olympic coverage.  Weather has been pretty rainy all afternoon, so not much else to be done.

So now that you're sufficiently bored, click this link and donate!  Many thanks.

Every day is an adventure here in Colorado

Wow, what a day. And it's not evey 7pm yet!

I set my alarm clock to go ahead and get up and get my 1.5 hour ride in while it was cooler.  Got up at 7, got my breakfast smoothie made, ate, got dressed, and went out and loaded up my bicycle on the back of my motorcycle.  I didn't take a picture of that today, but here's an older one:

 

Yeah, I know, kind of nutty.  But it works.  Well, it used to.  But I'll get to that in a minute.

I rode out of town, found a good spot to park, and jumped on the bike to get another ride on the St. Kevin's climb.  Did that part of the race course and doubled back on the road and finished up right on time.  Loaded up and headed back to the campground.  While I was gone, Matt had gotten some breakfast, gone for a little exploratory motorcycle ride, and returned with some groceries while I was in the shower.  When I got out of the shower, he helped me with a couple of nagging plumbing issues we had with the RV, then we geared up and decided to go do some exploring.

Ashley had bought a couple of great books on Colorado off-road trails, and we used Colorado Backroads & 4-Wheel-Drive Trails.  In it, we found that a nice loop looked to be to take the Mosquito Pass over to Fairplay and down and back across on Weston Pass.  Mosquito was labeled "moderate" with Weston labeled as "easy."  Hmm, alrighty then!

We set off and pretty quickly found ourselves on a dirt road through abandoned mine country.  We passed a large area of parked SUV's with ATV trailers and kept going.  Soon the road turned to large loose rocks and not much more than what you'd call "trail."  And it started going WAY up.  And things started looking like this:

Yeah, that little road on the right is what we rode up.

And a while later, we made it to the summit:

The camera and Aerostich pants on top of jeans adds 20 pounds

That was seriously some of the most intense, crazy, scary riding I've ever done.  Until we started going DOWN.  Oh my.  That was worse.  Way worse.  Oh, I forgot one interesting thing...there was a Jeep at the top with HAM radio antennas all over it.  At first I just assumed it was some dude monkeying around with talking to really far away places by getting his antenna REALLY high.  But no, it was a dude and his wife and they were volunteering doing communication work for the burro races.

Wait, the WHAT?!?  That's right, the burro races.  Turns out this weekend is Burro Days in Fairplay, CO.  So we were informed that if we were to see any burros (that would presumably have people with them), it would be appreciated if we would just pull to the side and stop and turn off our engines and let them pass.  Both Matt and I assumed these burros would have riders.  Mmmmkay, so we head down, trying not to fall off a bazillion foot cliff while navigating motorcycles on steep, twisty, rocky, loose "roads."  Oh, and keeping our eyes out for the burros.

We go a pretty good ways without incident and without seeing any burros and reach a point where it appears the road gets much better and there's an abandoned mine and a couple cars parked.  We stop to take a break, because both our necks and shoulders and backs were getting quite tired of all this work.  Okay, it's not hard work, but when you're that stressed about it, it's bad.  We find that one of the groups is another set of HAM operators helping with the burro races.  I quickly noticed they had a cooler and it was quite large.  And we were parched.  I asked if they'd be so kind as to sell us a couple bottles of water, but they were quite friendly and gave us each a bottle.  So we sucked those down and got ready to mount up.  In smalltalk with those folks, I mentioned I was glad it looked like we had the worst of the road behind us.  "Oh, well, there's one more pretty bad spot on down.  Be careful."  Oh great.

Turns out his idea of a bad spot and ours were way different.  It really wasn't much of a big deal and soon we found ourselves on a long stretch of normal gravel road.  And then it happened.  Burros!  But apparently these aren't racers because they're just walking the burros.  We crawl past them and give them plenty of room, only to see they have race numbers on the burros.  And each burro had a pack  on its back with a gold mining pan, shovel, and various other things that appeared to be "spec."  Matt commented at one brief spot in between burros that he wanted to tell one of them to "get your ass out of the road."  But I think he knew that wouldn't come across quite right from out from under a motorcycle helmet, since he was only kidding.  We had nowhere to be, and well, how often do you get to see a real live burro race anyway?

We made our way through that and to the highway and turned toward Fairplay.  Wow, Burro Days are huge.  Took a while to get through town and to the other side where we stopped at a store to top off our fuel tanks, hit the restrooms, and get a snack.  Then we made our plan to head further south and go back across the much easier Weston Pass.  And it was easier, with parts of it simply "unmaintained for low clearance vehicles."  So it was very rough and rocky, but never particularly steep.  At one stop, however, minor disaster.  Matt shook my bike's rack and it moved.  A lot.  No, I wasn't carrying a bicycle, but I did have the top box on it there. 

One bolt was missing, and one bolt (caddy-corner from the missing one) was sheared off.  It and it's bushing were still there, though, and we realized that the rear pair (of which this was one) were longer than the front.  This meant that this bolt would work in place of the missing one on the front.  So we figured three were better than two and should get us home, right?  WRONG.  Not long after, that bolt sheared off, too.  Now, I had next to nothing in my top box, so it wasn't overweight or anything.  But the vibration just killed it.  So we had to stop again and remove it completely and strap it to Matt's rack.  Fortunately we had enough stuff to do that securely.

So it would seem that bike rack and top box are a bit too much weight, particularly as far back as they have to be mounted to work, on the rough trails.  That's not a huge problem because they aren't hard to take off for that kind of thing, it was just tough finding it out like this.  I need to procure a few parts, but I think I can get it back together by Tuesday.  I was a bit bugged to find that in the bouncing around it also broke my rear tail light, but then I remembered that I had a tail light upgrade that I had yet to install, and I brought it with me!  Talk about luck.  Even when I have bad luck, things have seemed to work out okay.  *knock knock knock*

So we made it back, and remember when I said Matt bought groceries? 

Well, he got steaks and he not only grilled them, he made potatoes and even got a fresh cantaloupe and cut that up for us to eat.  I knew I brought that boy for a reason!  And we did all of that before 6:30pm.  Good thing, too, because he had to finish cooking in a bit of rain as it was!  But the skies have cleared up and our bellies are full and we're ready for another day of adventure tomorrow.

Good day!

So I loaded my bicycle on the back of my motorcycle and headed over to St. Kevins, the first climb in the race.  My prescribed workout today was to walk up a 45 minute hill.  See, I'll be doing some walking in the race, and it was to be a light day since I had a long ride day yesterday.  So instead of just walking, I also pushed my bike up the hill.  That's even more like the race and that way I get to ride it down, which is fun. 

So that went fine.  After that was over, Matt headed out on my bike again to get another tube for the rear tire of his bike.  He picked up a nail two days ago, and yesterday he got the wrong tube by accident.  Unfortunately the closest place to get a tube at all was an hour-plus away, much of that because of construction on the main route between here and there.  But as he was leaving with his new tube, the guys in the motorcycle shop said "don't go around, just go through...they've been letting motorcycle guys through."  So he tried it.  And they weren't letting motorcycle guys through on this day.

So he tried to find another route, which ended in futility due to a newly reopened mine that was hogging an entire mountain top.  He ended up back at the construction site, but this time asked the foreman.  The answer was still no, but that there was a "hiking trail" just above the site that he could make it through since my bike is so off-road capable.  So he went looking for it and had to make his own trail to get there, but made it.  And at times he apparently had to basically stop and wiggle the handlebars between trees, but he made it through!

All this craziness meant it took him about an hour and a half longer than I thought (and I was kind of freaking out a little, but that was probably just because he delayed my lunch so much), but he got back and we got the tube installed.  And it seems we did everything right, because it's doing great.  We went for a late evening ride on some of the bike race course along with some exploring.  And we got these pictures:

Matt

Moi

That was cool and all and we did about 40 miles, mostly gravel with some occasional awesome pavement.  I still need to tweak my rear suspension some, but I really like the bike.  Well, other than dumping it on its side once when trying to make a very low speed turn in some very soft earth.  But it didn't hurt anything and it's light enough I had no trouble picking it back up myself.  So no harm, no foul.

Then we made it back to town and had to scare up some grub.  There's a local joint called "Quincy's" that is NOT the chain from days gone by.  This place has filet mignon Sun-Thurs and prime rib on Fri-Sat.  And nothing else.  Well, except a vegetarian lasagna, but that hardly counts.  And they have Fat Tire, which is also important.  So I ate and ate and ate this 16oz of prime goodness:

My coach said "Eat plenty of red meat."

I could swear my coach said to up my beer intake, too.  So I've been working on that.  *ahem*  Anyway, good day here in and around PbVille.

Poor Matt

So Matt got here yesterday to hang with me until the race.  I brought his motorcycle with me as well as mine so that he and I could go do some exploring in the time I'm not still training (and there will be a lot of that to kill).  Both of our motorcycles are "dual sports", which means they are street legal and very street capable, but are also very off-road capable.  That helps up here where the roads turn to rutted out rocky dirt roads with little warning.

Unfortunately, Matt realized a bit late in the game that he needed a new front tire for his motorcycle.  He ordered one and thought he'd have it in time to install it before I left, but it was a day late.  So he shipped it to Leadville and I picked it up.  He rode his bike to a dealer about 40 miles away (the closest one!) this morning to have it installed.  Unfortunately, on the way back he picked up a nail in his rear tire!  He was only about three miles away when he noticed it, and with little alternative he slowly rode it the rest of the way back to the campground.  Right now his bike looks like this:

It's missing something.

Unfortunately some part of this journey destroyed the tube in his tire to the point that there was no way we could patch it.  So we spent the next 30 minutes googling dealers and calling only to finally find one about 40 miles away.  Unfortunately the road between here and there is closed due to a tunnel collapse, so it'll be more like 60 miles for him to ride MY bike around and pick it up.  But at least it looks like we can get one today instead of having to wait until Monday at best, and that's using next day shipping.

The worst part of all this, too, is that not only did he get rained on this morning some, but it looks like it's raining in every direction from here right now and he's likely to get drenched on this trip, too.  Sucks for him, but what are you gonna do?

My day wasn't so awesome, either, but simply because I had a six hour training ride to do.  I wasn't supposed to ride terribly hard, just needed to ride for a long time.  So I did about all the riding there is to do in this area that doesn't involve crazy amounts of mountain climbing.  You can see the data here.  First thing you'll notice is I didn't go for the full six hours.  That was due to the aforementioned weather situation.  I started at 7:30, but really should have been moving by 7am and I would have made it.  But alas, I was at that last hour about to hit thirty minutes of singletrack before making the 30 minute trek back to town when I heard thunder.  Looking through the trees I quickly discerned that this was going to be a significant event.

So I skipped the singletrack and started getting my butt off the mountain.  I did get rained on pretty good, but at least I was able to get to lower elevation pretty quickly.  And while the rain wasn't ever terribly bad, there was a good bit of lightning and thunder in the area, so it seemed best to just cut it a little bit short.  I was pretty happy with how well I did at a ride this long at altitude...I'm getting more and more accustomed to it, which was the whole point.

It's kind of weird, though.  That was my last "long ride" until the race, which is now just over two weeks away.  And I probably won't have another six hour ride for a month, I'd guess, if then.  That kind of makes me happy right about now.  *grin*

Hopefully Matt gets the right tube and it stops raining by the time he gets back with it so we can install it.  That way we can go check out the Colorado Freeride Festival over in Winter Park!  Ashley and the kids and I got to see some of a similar event there last year, and it looks like a blast.  Wish us luck!

First full day report from Leadville

That's me today taken on the Mineral Belt Trail that runs around the town of Leadville.  It's 11.6 miles in length and is totally paved with a handful of road crossings.  It has about 700 feet of elevation gain and loss, with basically one long climb and one long descent.

I've done two rides now.  Yesterday's ride was about 80 minutes and today was 60.  Just trying to take it easy and get my legs back under me while getting used to the altitude.  I have prepared about as well as I could have, but there's just nothing like being here.  My lungs feel like they're struggling very hard at times, but the nice thing is my heart rate seems to be staying in good shape even with long sustained climbs and decent output wattage.  For example, a 600' continuous climb today at 184W yielded an average heart rate of 138 bpm.  That was on pavement, so the speed at which I did it won't translate to the race climbs exactly, but it shouldn't be too far off.  And that was around 12MPH for the 4.8 miles that it took. 

I'm very happy with that, but it's also happening when I'm still "fresh" from lower altitude, too.  The real question is how that will change as my body settles in and I'm having to do much long outputs on Sunday and Monday at the Carmichael camp.

The campground I'm at has been good.  It's an easy walk to the entire downtown area and the facilities are reasonable.  I've yet to find anything important that I've forgotten.  There are a few small things, but it's all stuff that Alan can bring when he flies out to do the camp with me.  The cable TV is decent and the wifi is actually very good.  The only nagging issue seems to be how we're going to get Matt's motorcycle re-jetted so it will run at altitude fine, but we're working some angles on that.

So far everything has been so good that I'm a little nervous!  It's almost too good.  The tragedy in Aurora was a little too close, and it's hard to feel very good about much of anything today in light of that.  But all we can really do is try to move on from those things.

It's about to get real!

That's right, I'm on my way to Leadville!

[ And I have to take this opportunity to remind you that you can still donate to my Team First Descents effort to help young cancer survivors! ]

My apologies for not blogging more, but honestly my training got pretty boring after those first few big milestones.  Since I've last posted I have a good many more rides longer than four hours, with many at the six hour length.  This calendar year alone I've now done almost two thousand miles of bicycling and well over 300 miles of running.  That's alongside something like 75 hours of weight room training.  I'm certainly in the best shape of my life.

Will it be enough for the Leadville Trail 100 MTB race?  It should be.  But just in case it's not, I'm leaving pretty early so I can do the Carmichael Training camp specifically geared for this race.  Then I'm going to stay in Leadville for the three weeks in between to finish my training at altitude so that I'm as acclimated as I can get.  Next I'm going to take the start line and do my best to enjoy my day and hope that everything works out well for me.  If it does, I'll be back to the finish in something under twelve hours and join the list of Leadville finishers.  As long as it's under twelve hours, I'll consider this a raging success.  Can I get it a lot under 12 hours?  Stay tuned...

I'm writing this entry while my buddy, John, takes a turn driving us out.  He's an awesome road trip buddy who agreed to drive out with me to give me some company and help with the driving load.  I'll drop him off in Denver to fly back to NC here soon, though.  Then my buddy Alan will fly in and join me this weekend for the camp and fly back home shortly after.  Then next week another buddy, Matt, will fly in and stay for three weeks with me.  He'll be the crew for Alan and I during the race, and otherwise he and I will do some motorcycle riding around Colorado when I'm not training.

The best part is one of Matt's kids will fly with my wife and my two kids to Leadville just before the race and they will help crew, too.  Then we'll all stick around Colorado for another week after and do some sight-seeing.  We're going to have a ton of fun!  Well, they will.  I'll probably sit in the car for a few days whimpering and licking my wounds!

The worst part is being gone this long from my wife and kids.  Hopefully I can keep myself occupied well enough to not miss them too badly.  We had a long talk and the kids promised to help out really well while I'm gone, and I'm sure they will.  Otherwise Ashley is at the ready to ship ME their iPod's and the Wii remotes. *cough*

Anyway, here's a picture of the RV and trailer as we loaded up to head this way...

I'll be staying for the next month in that RV, too!  One of us may not survive...

And here's the bike rack we built on the wall:

We've got two motorcycles loaded behind those, and every bicycle part and tool that I own, I think.  And at least I'm going out early enough that I should be able to figure out everything I've forgotten in plenty of time to get it here anyway!

I'll try to write about how the camp goes, and then look for some blog posts with some pictures from some very high mountain passes (that I'll be finding via motorcycle, not bicycle!) over the next few weeks....

What Coaches Do

Warmed up on a hill, then you see the five repeats!

[ Gentle Reminder: Help me help kids with cancer! ]

So today was a hill repeat day.  Not just any hill repeat day, but five-minute hill repeats.  Five of them.  Which means I needed a five minute hill.  For those who may not quite understand, that's a hill that it will take me a full five minutes to ride up on a mountain bike.  Which is a pretty long hill.  And add to it that I needed to maintain a pretty high power level for the entire interval, too, which means if the hill isn't very steep then it has to be REALLY long because I'm going to have to go fast to maintain that moderate power.

Great.

Step one was to find a hill.  In looking at some old data, it seemed like I could do it at Umstead State Park.  Well, I'd actually have to start outside the park on Old Reedy Creek Road and travel into the park on what was basically a really steep hill for a short distance that flattens out into not much of a hill.  But all I needed was any kind of sustained uphill and I'd just make the bike go really fast to keep my power up.

Great.

So as I got the hill figured out and looked ahead to doing the interval, I thought "see, this is why you have a coach.  What a great idea that was.  You'd never plan to do something like this otherwise."  And with that I patted myself on the back and started my day.  Unfortunately, the day actually started with a little over an hour in the weight room with my other coach.  With him, well, there is no plan that I know about, I just show up two or three days a week and he puts me through all manner of crazy exercises that I couldn't even remember much less plan to do on my own.  And sometimes I even get to work with NBA or former NBA or going-to-be NBA players.  Which is cool until you are actually doing exercises with these freaks of nature who have legs about a mile longer than yours and are half your age and yet you somehow feel like you must do everything in your power to keep up with them.

Great.

After that, it was off for some lunch, a couple errands, and then to my hill in the afternoon.  Which was, of course, the hottest afternoon of the entire year.  I got warmed up and hit those first couple hill repeats.  Those went well, and I even put out more power than I should have.  But by the third one, I was thinking "WHY THE HELL DID YOU GET A COACH?!?!  WHAT KIND OF STUPID IDEA WAS THAT?  AND WHY IS SHE SO MEAN?  DOES SHE REALLY WANT TO KILL ME?!?!?"  (Yes, I yell at myself in my own head.)  But then Pandora saved me with just the right set of songs at just the right time and before long I was near the end of that last interval.  And I pounded out the rest of it.  The data is lovely.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

And with that, my thoughts pretty much immediately went to "Man, I love my coach.  That workout was something I would never have done in a million years if she hadn't been there to make me do it."  And just like that, I turned around and coasted down the hill for a while, recovered, and decided to take a victory lap of Crabtree.  Which, as it turns out, I did really fast because, well, I was inspired.  I didn't care that it was hot, I didn't care that I was tired, I just wanted to let loose and have some FUN.  And while it put me over my prescribed time by a few minutes, I'm pretty sure the kind of fun I had was something my coach wouldn't have minded at all.  But just in case she did mind, I'm going to suck up a bit and plug her by reminding all of you that she's not just an awesome coach, but she's an awesome writer and yoga instructor.  So go buy her books and take her yoga classes (in person or online!).  gulp

[ My apologies for the gratuitous use of underlines, bolds, italics, and most of all, combinations of all of the above. No, wait, nevermind, I do not apologize.  It's cool and you know it. ]

USMC Mud Run, Take Two

I've done a couple different Warrior Dashes, a Rugged Maniac, the Muddy Buddy, and now I've done the USMC Mud Run for the second time in less than a year.  The USMC Mud Run is by far the toughest of these events (there are a few others that are tougher than this, but certainly none more competitive).

This course is 5.2 miles in length and contains a whopping 36 obstacles.  Of these, many are impossible without teamwork, so this is a four person team event only.  Only a handful are fairly easy with the rest being moderate to difficult.  By contrast, I'd say most of the Warrior Dash and Rugged Maniac obstacles are fairly easy, with just a few moderate ones and no difficult ones.  That's what separates this event from the rest.

Both of my experiences with this race were with the same team...me, Alan, Michael, and Kenny.  All of us run a decent amount, with me the slowest of the bunch.  Fortunately I hold my own just fine on the obstacles, but it's nice that we have a variety of body types on our team.  Michael and I are larger and a little stronger than Alan and Kenny, but that's good because those two are lighter and easier to lift and carry.  You need a good mix in this race, not just a bunch of huge guys.

Last year we were 13th out of 84 corporate teams, and I believe 77th overall out of around 2200 teams.  Looks like this year the event was a little smaller at only 1500 teams, but we were 43rd overall and 7th out of 58 corporate teams.  We finished in 1:20 last year and 1:08 this year, but we think the course this year was a little bit longer thanks to having a couple more tough obstacles that were closed last year.  So we did a lot better.  Part of that was due to Alan having a small fall last year that required a few minutes of medical attention, but part was also our familiarity with the course and some better execution.  And we were probably in a little bit better shape.

This course gets you soaked in mud at the very first obstacle, and keeps soaking you in mud all the way through.  For example, to get all the grit out of some thin Smartwool socks requires rinsing thoroughly (including turning them inside out and rinsing).  Then wash with them inside-out to start with (on an extra-rinse cycle).  Then turn them back right-side-out and wash them AGAIN.  That's the only way.  Good trail shoes can be recovered from this event.  The process is remove the insole and rinse after the event.  Let dry.  Shake shake shake everything you can out of them.  Then use some decent water pressure to hose them out.  Then soak them in hot water for a while.  Shake them out and rinse them again.  Then run them through a washing machine if you can.  Then let them air dry.  Then run in them a couple times, and wash them again.  That usually gets the last of the grit out.  I generally keep an old almost worn-out pair of shoes around just for this kind of race.  As you can see, it's very hard on them.

What do you wear?  Ideally something thin and tight.  I wear triathlon tights, a compression dry-fit shirt, dry-fit headband (keeps SOME of the goop from running down your forehead and into your eyes, but only some), Smartwool socks, and trail shoes.  Wearing anything more is just more for the goop to stick to and weigh you down.  And the fine folks at the USMC Mud Run have some muddy concoction that will stick to anything.  It's quite spectacular.

After this race, I'm pretty beat up.  The best you can hope for in this race is the most thorough exfoliation you've ever had.  Particularly the shins and knees...those simply feel raw.  Most folks leave with some small amount of bleeding in that area, which was what happened to Alan and Kenny.  I think Michael and I escaped that, but that's just luck more than anything.  We were all incredibly wiped out otherwise, but very happy with our result.  I do think, though, that we might be over the last of our urges to do mud races like this.  They're a lot of fun, but quite hard on you.  At least for this year, it's time to turn my attention to Leadville training...

2012 6 Hours of Warrior Creek Race Report

I've been looking forward to the 6 Hours of Warrior Creek race since I raced as a team with a partner last year.  This year it was to be solo since I've ratcheted up my training for the Leadville 100.  It was not only my first six hour race, but actually my first ride longer than 5.5 hours! 

Going in I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  I did over-estimate my own speed capability on this particular course somewhat as I thought there was a chance I could do four laps (about 53 miles) in less than the cut-off time of 5:40.  But once they posted the exact race route for this year and I found it included several miles of additional course for the start, I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it.  And I was right as I ended up finishing four laps with a 6:02:17.  That only included one pit stop for just a tad over four minutes in between laps two and three.  That overall time was good enough for 32nd place out of 60 riders in Solo Open.  I'll be 40 later this year, and had I been in the 40+ age group, I would have improved to a whopping 31st out of 70 riders!  Which is to say this doesn't really get any easier as one gets older.

(Here's a very good video someone put together from this year's race.)

To back up and go into more detail, the weekend started with me meeting Alan at Warrior Creek on Friday to pre-ride the new start area and try to figure out where we wanted to setup our pit location.  You can't camp overnight at Warrior Creek for this event (camping doesn't open for another week or two), but we knew we'd be back at the gate early enough the next morning to be wherever we wanted, so that was good.  We got a nice pre-ride in and got a few questions answered about the course, and felt good about things for the start.  While I was sure the pre-race meeting would also answer questions, it never hurts to find out earlier so you can more fully plan how you expect things to go.  And then there was the unexpected contingency that we couldn't actually hear any of the pre-race meeting anyway due to not-so-awesome speakers (my only "complaint" about the race, and as such a very minor one, really).

Race morning came after a usual bad night of sleep.  That's probably part nerves and part just over-active brain wanting to think through everything to make sure I'm as prepared as I can be.  And then a big part that I'm not back home in my comfortable bed and am instead in an RV in a Walmart parking lot.  But these are things we do in the name of racing.  So we got to where we wanted to be for our pit space, got setup, and even had Alan parked and ready to save some space for Michael and Steve, who were driving up race morning from Chapel Hill.  But when Michael and Steve showed up, Alan had lost his car keys!  Fortunately we were able to get another guy to move temporarily so we could get Michael's truck out of everyone's way, and Alan eventually found his keys, so order was restored.  But not after about 20 minutes of desperate searching!

Race morning

Everyone got their gear ready and we headed over to the race start.  We sat there through the race meeting that we really couldn't understand (it was a lot like what the teacher on the old Charlie Brown TV cartoons sounded like) and then went to the starting line.  We started on time and everyone remembered to start their data (race starts now sound like a fast chorus of Garmin beeps, so it's getting harder and harder to forget it!) and started rolling.  It was a long section of road, but it really seemed to go by so fast and then we were on the temporary trail and finally onto the real trail.  The start basically put us on the main loop a couple miles "back" up the loop, so on the first lap we exited the race loop and continued straight to start a real full lap.  So the first "lap" had an extra three miles or so on top of the normal amount of just over 12 miles.

I knew Steve wasn't in his best shape this year, was on about three hours sleep from a week in NYC, and really just hoped to do three laps.  But Alan and Michael would be formidable competition since both had recently beaten me at the Doubleshot race (and not to mention the fact that I've never beaten either of them in a race!).  So I was really curious after the first lap if either might still be in the pits when I got there, since I was not planning to stop.  Unfortunately my first lap got derailed a little bit by a crash.  I haven't looked at my data yet to see how much time it cost me, but it probably was only 30 seconds of being stopped and maybe another minute or two of being slow.  But the crash hurt.  It was about six miles into the race, and I had worked my way into a group that was fairly fast.  That said, there were still a couple riders in the front of the group that were causing some accordion effect at the slower technical sections and then a train of folks like me wanting to get around them.  But it was going to take some time, because those riders were pretty fast otherwise.

Thanks to the accordion effect, I was watching the riders ahead of me more than exactly what the trail was doing and simply missed a small slick spot until it was too late to miss it.  I hit it with the front tire while trying to turn to the left just a bit, and my front tire washed out JUST enough that I went down on my left side.  And where I fell was right into a section of roots sticking out of the ground.  I hit on my left hip and upper left leg (just below the glute) and hit so hard that it really felt like I had to have torn my triathlon tights as well as my skin pretty badly.  On top of that, my bike scraped the upper part of my left shin pretty good, too.  And then the train of riders behind me almost made it a lot worse (which wouldn't have been their fault!).  But somehow they ALL were able to avoid me (I mean I was in a big heap right in the middle of singletrack).  I figure about 25 people had to have gone by while I got myself gathered back up.

Upon inspection, not only were my shorts not torn, but neither was my leg.  The bike looked fine.  So I jumped on and took off again.  Man, these bikes are built so well these days.  And as I pedaled, I could tell my shin was going to burn when I started sweating, and I was definitely badly bruised on my back-side, but it didn't seem like anything that was going to hinder my pedaling.  I did need to come down off the adrenalin rush from crashing, but once you've crashed as much as I have, well, you figure that stuff out pretty quickly.  And fortunately for me as well, that group of about 25 that went by me was in front of a nice gap on the course and I was able to work back up to speed without being in much traffic again for a while.  That was a big help.

So I finished that lap, all the while keeping an eye on my power average.  It was a little higher than I thought it should be, but not a ton, so I just slowly tried to get it down a little.  I felt fine, but I knew just because I felt fine now didn't mean I wasn't burning through energy reserves that I'd need later.  As I finished the lap and rolled toward our pit spot, I really hoped I'd see Alan and/or Michael still there, but alas, they had already been there and gone.  I planned for only the stop at lap two (and four if I miraculously ended up doing five), so I rolled on through and kept going for lap two.

This lap was pretty uneventful, and I did get the power closer to where it should be, though still a little high.  I felt like I was drinking and eating very well, and remembered to take my salt supplements on the hour.  When I finished this lap and pulled in the pits, I drank a good bit of the water as I rolled in but noted there was still what felt like a few ounces left.  Oh, and Michael was in the pits still, but Alan had been there and gone already.  Michael was just about ready to leave, and I'd guess that he probably left about 90 seconds into my four minute stop, so he was back about 2.5 minutes ahead. I had some of a PB&J sandwich and headed back out after also swapping more Honey Stinger waffles into my feed bag.

At this point I had been out there just over three hours.  I felt okay still, but not great, so I tried to take it even easier.  Somewhere around half way through this lap (another six miles or so), I started to feel noticeably worse.  Still not horrible, but on the decline.  Wasn't sure why as everything was going to plan other than a slightly elevated power level (but this was race day, I kept telling myself!), so there wasn't much to change other than maybe slowing a little more.  As I got to mile 8 on this lap, I ran into "Ann from Charlotte."  She was chatty, and I'm never one to turn down chatty on the trail, so we talked from that point until the end of the lap.  While it was me that caught her, her pace was still very good and so I was fine slowing just a tiny bit more to have someone to talk to (especially since growing up in Charlotte, we had stuff we could talk about). 

We both thanked one another as we ended the lap for helping pass those miles a little better, but Ann needed to pit for some stretching and I kind of thought I better not stop lest I talk myself into not continuing.  I did see that Michael was in our pit, so I rolled through and asked him if he was going out again or not.  He said he was thinking about it, but seemed non-committal, so I said good luck and that I was continuing on and kept going.  So I knew Steve was still behind me (hadn't seen him all day, but again, no surprise as we didn't figure he'd be able to push four laps anyway), and now I was ahead of Michael, and Alan was somewhere on ahead.  Now, I had these visions for about a mile that maybe I could do some pushing and maybe Alan would bonk and maybe I'd catch him. 

But that was short-lived.  I really started to bonk myself.  Especially when I realized that I had missed my last salt supplement and was a half hour past it.  This didn't happen until near mile six. That didn't seem like a big deal, so I popped one and took a swig to wash it down.  I did get a mouthful of water, but noticed I got a little air.  WHAT?  Tried to take another swig and yes, indeed, I was sucking air.  Oh man, I was out of water.  Not good!  Especially since about two miles later was when the cramps hit.  I felt my left calf first, but only mildly.  Then my right leg started cramping from the knee to the hip just inside the thigh area.  I've never cramped quite like that before!

Strangely, even though there were many miles to go, they only caused me to walk two places that were short but very steep hills.  Everywhere else I just made sure to gear all the way down and not try to put any big power in.  Just spin spin spin at a decent cadence.  And breath very well.  Before the hill came, breath very well.  And happily, it worked.  I never had a bad cramp.  I did have to slow down a good bit, but that's better than vapor-locking on the trail.  I was regularly passing people at this point who were stopped and stretching stuff out against a tree somewhere.  All that business about maybe seeing Alan had been long past, so I wasn't surprised to see he had been finished a while when I came in.  I was a little surprised to find out that "a while" was actually 25 minutes!  That's a pretty good crushing, right there.  Had I run my best lap of the day on that last lap, he would have still beaten me by over ten minutes!  Oh well, there's still more work to do if I am to beat him in a race.

I had to dig deep to do it, but I'm really glad I made four laps.  I could tell only a few minutes off the bike that my wound was fairly severe, though.  There was no bending at the waist after long, and it hurt.  So I got myself in the shower in the RV quickly and got clean and got some compression tights on.  I then got packed up and was able to head out of there as soon as we were allowed (once the race was officially over).  I iced the area a couple times before getting home, and it was very swollen and a little dark already.  By the next day, it was a lot of colors of the rainbow!  Plus I was wasted.  I was able to eat okay after the race, but didn't want a ton.  For the next day and a half, however, I ate like a fiend!  And I was still dehydrated at that point, because I've needed more lip balm than at any other point in my life!

All in all, I feel pretty good for still being four months out of Leadville.  While I wasn't quite as fast as I thought I could be, I'm not really trained very well for this kind of course.  I've done most of my training on longer hills since that's what I'll see at Leadville, and Warrior Creek is all very short hills (and a lot of them), which is just way different in how it affects the body.  But it still went very well, and so much better than it would have been at any other point in my life, so I'm really happy about that.  I owe most of that to hard work, but a lot of it to the kind of intelligent hard work that comes from having an awesome coach, Sage Rountree. Thanks, coach!

Vegas Vasectomy Vacation!

That's right, it's not a blog post about some stupid mountain bike race!  Unfortunately, it's a post about vasectomies.  Vasectomi?  No, spell check says vasectomies, so vasectomies it is. (Aren't you glad I chose a picture about Vegas instead of that other thing?)

So I'm listening to the radio this morning on the way to the dentist and the deejays are talking about a vasectomy clinic somewhere that offered a March Madness special.  Get a vasectomy this week and they provide free pizza for you all weekend, with the hook being that the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament is the perfect time to be unable to get outside or do much else.

Later as I was catching up on my twitter feed, I was noticing a few sports writers talking about how cool it would be to be in Vegas enjoying the tournament in a sportsbook.  Then it hit me...Vegas Vasectomy Vacation!

Wait, why does there have to be a vasectomy in there?  Well, it's like this.  Between my wife and I, something more permanent must be done on the birth control front.  And our doctor is a woman, so she and my wife rigged an election and I lost at the polls.  *badump-bump*  And my doctor normally recommends these things be done sooner rather than later once the decision has been made to do them, but she gave me a reprieve due to training for the aforementioned mountain bike race and the fact that what we've been doing has been working this long and should be fine for a little longer.

So back to the new plan.  Wait until mid-March next year, fly to Vegas, get vasectomy, enjoy the first weekend of the NCAA tournament from a sportsbook!  I mean if you have to do something like that to yourself, you deserve a little treat, right?  And it must be a great idea, because I've already gotten offers to go with me and make sure I'm "okay" after the procedure.

So consider this an open letter to my doctor, because the only catch here is that my wife said the only way she's letting me do it is if I can get a referral from her for a reputable doctor to handle this in Las Vegas.  I'm sure the good doctor will help me make this happen, though.  Sure of it.

Just Do It

That's a lot of kilojoules.

Sometimes you have to just follow the wisdom of the greatest marketing guys ever and Just Do It (I've actually met the marketing duo that came up with this campaign for Nike...very interesting guys and a story worthy of blogging in a few more years, I think).  That's what I did today, anyway.  What do I mean?  Well, today was long ride day.  That meant a 5.5 hour mountain bike ride.  It's also unseasonably warm and the high was supposed to be in the mid-80s.  The combination didn't seem like a great one, so I decided I should get up early and get this one done before it got hot.

But yeah, getting 5.5 hours in before it gets hot is hard.  That means starting in the dark, so that's what I did.  I've got a kick-ass headlamp that I've never used, so I busted it out.  Besides, Umstead isn't very hard to follow, and that's my preferred long ride kind of place since it's the closest kind of terrain we have to what I'll see in Leadville.  Okay, it's not close in terms of terrain at all, but it's close in terms of the kind of speed I'll be doing, which is good enough.

Normally I sort of look forward to long ride day, but I was fretting this one a little bit.  I did a mountain bike race on Saturday and then another fairly hard road ride on Sunday, so it  hasn't been a full week since I stressed my riding legs pretty hard.  On top of that, I had an aborted run on Monday due to not feeling well, and my run yesterday wasn't all that fun, either.  And two weight room sessions in between.  And then I had to set the alarm for 4:45am to get the kind of start I needed.  Combine all that and you have a lot of reasons to whine (and I usually only need one, and if I can't find that I'll make one up).

Just Do It.

Set alarm, get up, get going.  That's what it takes.  It's pretty simple, really.  But that doesn't mean your body is going to cooperate when you get there, and there were times early in the ride that mine felt like it wanted to revolt.  But it wasn't a serious revolution, and everything worked itself out.  I have a little course I like to ride out there that's a little over 16 miles, so I rode it four times.  Now, the first time was mostly in the dark, so that one was a little slower than usual.  But the next one was kind of fast.  And when I came in even quicker on the third one, I knew I should see if I could make the fourth my fastest.  That would bring me in at right around five hours even and leave me with thirty more minutes to do, so I couldn't just blow everything out.

I came a little close to over-doing it, but I didn't.  I did get my fastest split, though, which meant I got faster for five straight hours, which is pretty cool.  Then I took it easier on the last part, but still wasn't really slow, either.  And with all that, I got my longest distance on a bicycle ever at 72 miles, as well as my fastest average speed for a long ride at 13.0MPH.  That's the first time I've had a long negative-split like that, too, so there were a lot of firsts today.

All on a day where I didn't want to do it, but I did.  Just Do It.

First race of the season!

That's me in mostly dark gear on the left, Alan in the middle, just as the race started.

This past Sunday was the Bushwhack Mountain Bike Challenge.  I competed in it along with my friend, Alan.

The race was 1 mile on pavement (to separate the field some) then a 7 mile loop of the Lake Crabtree County Park singletrack.  Then off into Umstead State Park for 18 miles of gravel trail.  Then back into Crabtree for another loop.  And then for some reason, another mile of pavement.  The total distance was almost exactly 34 miles.  Click here to see my race data.

Note that the average temp was basically 30F.  The wind wasn't as gusty as predicted, but was pretty constant at about 15MPH.  The problem with gear selection for a race like this is the singletrack is slow and wooded, but the gravel stuff was fast and open.  And in the middle of the race.  So while the singletrack was reasonably well protected from the wind and by nature we were going slower, it wasn't quite as cold.  But on the gravel trail we were much more out in the open and able to go a lot faster, which meant the wind was a big factor.

The race took from 9:30am until nearly 1pm. So 25F to start, 35F at the finish.

I chose my gear poorly and overdid it a little.  One too many layers on the bottom, and too heavy of a jacket on top.  I almost had an additional core layer (fleece vest), but in a short trail pre-ride to warm up and show Alan one of the tech features, I was already getting hot, so I got rid of that.  Good thing I did, as only three miles in to the race I was unzipping the jacket and trying to get the vents on it open.  A note here: PRACTICE USING YOUR GEAR.  ALL THE FEATURES.  With gloves on I had a heck of a time getting the armpit vents open, and it cost me a lot of time trying to do it on singletrack.  But I was boiling.  After the race it was still not much above freezing, and when I took my jacket off, my inner layers were completely soaked.

I used a Smartwool balaclava, but that was too much, too.  A similar cap that covered my ears would have been sufficient.  Clear glasses are important for helping keep the wind out of the eyes (well, that and there was mud flying here and there, too, especially on the second lap of Crabtree as the sun did the thaw thing to previously frozen parts and made things a bit interesting).  I had Smartwool glove liners on under some medium winter mountain bike gloves.  That part was good...anything less and my fingers would have been very cold.  I have some Lake winter mountain bike boots.  I hate them because they are so heavy (and in size 14 this is magnified), but those with some thick Smartwool socks, Sugoi winter sock liners, and some chemical toe warmers that hunters use all kept my toes from freezing.  Not sure on this day I could have gotten away with less here.  But those boots are heavy.  Normal bike shoes are very light, but also well vented.

I was very lucky to have thought as I got my gear ready that morning that I needed to add an insulated tube to my Camelbak.  Alan wasn't so lucky, and suffered the consequences.  The water freezes in the tube and you can't drink.  Fortunately he had also brought an insulated bottle with fluid so he had something.  I would have had nothing until it thawed, which according to Alan was not until a little less than an hour left.

And then there was the race itself.  I am dumb dumb dumb.  Alan has always been faster than me.  What's more, he has an insane ability to start out a race really fast without hurting himself.  Me, not so much.  I know this.  So when I found myself on his wheel all the way up the road and back, well, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE SIGN.  But these dudes on a TANDEM mountain bike passed us on the road and he didn't give chase.  For some reason I didn't either, even though I was pretty sure those guys would be holding us up on the singletrack.  So I sat on his wheel, but was very annoyed about it.  Maybe subconsciously I knew I was already going too fast for my own good.

So we head into the singletrack, and of course we stack up in a bit of a conga line behind the tandem.  We get to the feature I showed Alan, and everyone strangely goes straight.  Except me.  You see, if you turn left, there is a fairly technical rock pile to climb and you cut off about 15 seconds of trail.  And it was a legal option in this race.  Why in the heck everyone else went straight, I do not know.  Especially Alan, because this was what we went to check out in our little pre-ride.  I rode there two days ago and knew this was an optional section so I checked it to see which was faster.  The rock pile was so much faster it was worth the small risk. Alan has as much tech ability as me, so I assumed he'd hit it.  Especially to pass the tandem.  But he didn't. 

When I did, I passed everything and set sail a little.  But then I started looking at the computer.  Whoa, my heart rate is near red-line and power average is around 275W.  Well shoot.  My Functional Threshold Power is only 250W (that's the maximum amount of power I can sustain for a one hour period before I give out).  And this is a 34 mile race.  I'm not near averaging 34MPH, and not even going to be near half that.  Uh-oh.  Try to take it easier. Breathe.  Breathe.  BREATHE DAMMIT.  Oh, stop yelling at yourself.  You are breathing.  But apparently you're just going too fast.  So I slow down.  At this point that conga line, minus the tandem, catches me and I let them cruise by, including Alan (they must have all passed the tandem somewhere in between).  We're about four miles into that first seven miles of singletrack and I'm overheating and redlining and wondering how I got so stupid so fast.  But fortunately, after the conga line there's nothing for a long ways back.  So I take my time and start trying to vent my jacket.  That goes poorly, but I get it done without crashing after about a half mile of fiddling. 

I put it back on cruise control a bit to try to get the heart rate down.  Crud, it's not working.  Back off a tad more and just try to use my bike handling skills to keep up the momentum.  I pre-rode this on Friday and know there are no more technical features coming up, so I just tried to use the force.  You know, let it flow through you and all that.  Seems to be working as I'm not pedaling much and I'm going kinda fast.  The group in front got away, but still nothing back (and I know there were a LOT more sport-class riders back there somewhere).  Check the heart rate.  Oh, great, it's still jacked.  Wonderful.

Exit Crabtree and head into Umstead.  Sadly, it's all climb all the time for the next ten minutes or so.  I decide there's not much I can do but gear it down and spin my butt off but not go very fast.  So that's what I do.  The hill levels out some and I click up a few gears but keep the cadence up.  Oh, waffle time.  Wow, Honey Stinger Waffles are difficult to chew at 45F.  But it's not 45F.  It's 30F.  They are IMPOSSIBLE to chew at 30F.  They just sort of break off and all you can do is hold them in your mouth for a while until they soften some more, and then you chew.  It's sort of like trying to eat frozen leather.  Well, what I imagine frozen leather would be like, anyway, since I haven't actually tried it.  Not awesome.  Next time I have to ride when it's this cold I'm going to try some sort of Chews or Shot Blox or whatever and keep them in my Feed Bag(tm) with a couple of those chemical hand warmers to see if that will keep those soft enough to eat.  But for this race I had to tear through four waffles on about 30 minute intervals (I gutted out the last 45 minutes without one...note to self, you owe yourself a free waffle).

On the plus side, I was able to open and hold and attempt to eat the waffles while maintaining speed and while wearing two pairs of gloves.  That's got to be worth something.  Oh look, a cookie...

So I get to some downhill and start thanking the Maker for answering what had to be the worst prayers ever. Only the downhill doesn't last long enough.  My heart rate is still going right back up.  Wunderval.  At this point it looks like I might as well just see if I can make something around my Lactate Heart Rate Threshold work for 2.5 hours.  That's smarts right there, since it can't really be done.

Another buddy of mine was taking pictures at the only water crossing on the route, which is in Umstead about half way through the race distance.  Right before this point, a female rider passed me.  I'm not sexist about these sorts of things...honestly.  I think "more power to her" and figure I'll just ride my ride.  But as we head to the water, she starts to slow a lot.  I decide she's going to have to pass me again, because I'm bombing this water like a bad-ass.  It wasn't to impress her, nor to make her feel bad.  My buddy was taking pictures!  I mean I couldn't be immortalized in digital imagery tip-toeing through a water crossing BEHIND A GIRL!  Okay, NOW I'm being sexist.  I admit it, I was wrong, I apologize ladies.  But you'd do it too.  Search your feelings, you know I'm right.

That's me in the water crossing.

It's okay, though, because she got her revenge on the next climb.  My strength coach, Jonas Sahration, has a saying...it's something like "You know Newton has a lesser-known third law of motion...FAT DON'T FLY."  In my case we can amend that a little for cycling and say FAT DON'T CLIMB.  And it don't.  So off the lady went.  (I outweighed her.  See what I did there?)  She slowly and steadily pulled away from me in Umstead until I could no longer see her.  There were also some other fellows who passed me, some of which I re-passed back.  I'd say that all-in-all, I probably got passed by about twelve riders once we got on the trail and maybe got about three of those back.  I do not like those numbers.

As I was getting near the end of Umstead I was thinking "It's going to be so nice to turn after the airport overlook...it's just all big soft downhill all the way back to Crabtree."  Well, that's true.  But what I didn't know was that the stupid 15MPH wind was IN MY FACE that entire way from the overlook to Crabtree.  I do remember thinking "well, my heart rate might be jacked, but this climb is going well....my speed is really good at least" on the way into Umstead.  Why, oh why, didn't that make me realize that it was because I had a stiff wind at my back?!?  Stupid, stupid ego. I just thought I was that good...

So I pedal on and head back into Crabtree.  It looks like the "expert" class riders must have finished somewhere around 30 minutes ahead of me, because I actually saw some of them and had to let one pass me on the small section of the loop that overlaps on the return trip (you really do like 1.1 laps of Crabtree upon re-entry and only like .9 of the loop on the way out).  So I pass what will eventually be start/finish and head around to complete the loop, pretty much on my own now.  Haven't seen anyone ahead or behind me for a while.  Crabtree does do some switchback kind of stuff even though there isn't much elevation change, and it's not very dense forest, so it's easy to see for long distances both directions sometimes.  Not much going on, until....

Oh shoot, some dude is catching me.  sigh  So I turn it up half a notch.  Okay, good, that's working.  He's still back there, but isn't really catching me any more.  I work my way around and get headed back along I-40 on the back side of the loop.  Crap, the sun has thawed out what were apparently LARGE frozen sections earlier this morning and now it's pure mud.  Well, only one thing to do...keep going fast!  I was mud slinging and sliding around, but apparently I have better bike control skills and the dude behind me, because I never see him again even though we still go through some really good places for visuals.  Oh, snap.  I'm catching someone too!  So I dial it up a half notch....oh crap, DIAL IT BACK.  Don't need the half notch.  This rider is toast, apparently.  Oh, it's the female rider from earlier!  She says "come on by whenever" as I get to her wheel, and I respond with "passing on the left" and try to pass on the left.  Only she forgets to actually, oh, LET ME BY and I have to make my own trail through the woods. 

She realizes her error and does yell an apology, and I say no worries and pedal on.  We are only about a mile from the end of the singletrack, and she picks it up a notch (she probably wasn't familiar with the trail, and it's WAY easier to pick it up a notch when you are following someone than when you're solo on unknown singletrack) and loses ground only VERY slowly through to the end.  I was probably 50 yards ahead of her when we got back to the road, but then she really was dead and I pulled away on the road section by another 200 yards or so.

The road section was literally an out-and-back that required a U-turn IN THE ROAD.  At the start they had someone stationed there sitting in a chair that you literally road around.  At the finish?  Nothing.  Just paint on the pavement.  I almost blew right past it!  Saw it just in time, thankfully.  Oh, and Alan?  I figured he blistered me.  Turns out while he was ahead of me, it was only by around three minutes as I passed him going the other way just as I was heading out on the road. 

But this was a learning event, not so much a goal race for me.  What did I learn?  Well, I'm still building base, which means I don't have much speed nor much climbing power.  That means I need to moderate attempts at those, or I might kill myself.  I learned a lot about gear.  I learned a little bit about trying to eat food in the arctic. I learned to practice using my gear.  I learned that you probably SHOULD be cold before a race starts, not toasty already.  Most of all, I learned to pay better attention to what is going on early to keep from going nuts and hurting myself early.  Wait, I knew that.  Crap, I hate re-learning things.  Especially the hard way.

A quick view of the data shows 202W average.  I've done that on two hour TRAINING RIDES.  sigh  On this day I just didn't have any more than that, though.  I had figured I'd be in the 215-225W range.  Could have been, too, I think.  If I could have pulled off 225W I would have been maybe 15 minutes faster. That may have been a little bit of an ambitious goal, hard to say.  I think I finished about 40th and Alan 35th or so (out of about 90 riders total).  I covered the distance in 2:45, though my goal was closer to 2:30.  Now, about that cookie...

Here I am at the glorious finish.