racing w/alex

no more ugly stone wall

trying to keep the grass green

waterpark

Wow- haven't posted in forever. Sammi and I hit up the water park on Friday to celebrate the 4th. Raging Waters is only 12 bucks after 4pm!


Sammi would probably kill me if she knew I posted a picture of her in a bikini on the internet...

After two hours of running up stairs in the sun to hit every slide I realized my legs were getting a little tired. Not the best prep for Solitude the next morning but hey- how often do I get to hit water slides. We went to the fireworks in Sugar House later on and got rained on by burning embers. Some guy next to us got really burned and was running around swearing.
Sure enough I was a little tired at Solitude the next day (though I think Deer Valley last weekend and the work week were more to blame than the water park) and was lucky to take the win. BZ is flying right now and was keeping me honest.

So I am mtb. state champ for another year- I need to be sure I get in shape earlier next year so Bart doesn't make me embarrassed to have the title when he crushes me in the early spring!

Otherwise I've been super busy with work and getting settled in to Sammi's house. I managed 11th at the Deer Valley Natioanal last weekend amidst the craziness, some stitches and a bruised rib/pulled back muscle. I just tried to keep a consistent pace the whole time and it ended up paying off. My top 20 call up didn't hurt either. Not sure how that happened!

Did a killer mtb loop with Ty, Derek and Jim in PC today- 3.5 hours with some snow up at shadow lake and a new trail called Fat Lip. Super sweet- it'll be a classic soon.

barbeque time

4th o july

headed up to breakfast at Brighton with Lesha, Linsey, and Carolyn, and then hopped on the bike and headed up Guardsmans to ride crest for the first time this year. SO much fun. trail is in awesome condition and except for lower big water the trail wasn't too crowded. time now for breakfast #2, a nap, and then dinner at Mom's.

new shoes for the epic

schirf's blog

Right on, Schirf is finally blogging again... schirfphoto.blogspot.com. check him out, he takes some pretty sweet pics. He's going to start posting one pic a day for the next month, and I thought I'd follow suit and try to post a pic a day. I figure for the first post I'll start with some pics from a trip to Seattle this past weekend with Lesha.

Mt. Raineer from the plane

chilling on the couch at McGlone's

double bluetooth earpiece sighting!

DV W

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. left the house in a hurry this morning when I got a text from Alex and a call from my Mom that it was snowing in Park City. Figured it would make for some good pictures and a fun race to watch. right on both counts, it was a sweet morning. awesome to watch alex get the win after a couple frustrating 2nd places, and fun to be around the race in general. I'm stoked to try and make it for the rescheduled Solitude race on the 5th. here are a few pics, more to come....
nice work dude.

40s

Since I am moving out this week we drank some big beers at the house last night- yum! Its a good thing you can't get those in Utah. Played on the slackline too- funny, there seems to be a correlation between balance and beer consumption...



Speaking of moving I was planning to get going on some stuff today and haven't done a thing! That will be a project for this week I guess.

I was pretty disappointed with how I felt at the Sundance ICUP yesterday but got over it quickly. I love that course and was hoping for a good race but just didn't have the ups. Rode a decent race but just didn't have a ton of energy and couldn't climb. I was still tired from chasing hard wed. and my legs and back were like "hey dude- give us a break." I hadn't had much of a chance to recover with work and just stuff to do. For some reason I grabbed the lead into the singletrack though but was soon thinking what am I doing here. I tried back off and save some for the end and did start to come around at the start of the last 1/2 lap. I gunned it and think I was making up some time on Mitchell but ran out of real estate. Oh well- felt great wed. so hopefully with a little rest I'll come around... moving is good recovery right?

Ty is off to Sun Valley for his first big round of Patagonia showings- good luck dude!

flats

Flats in races are funny- they can totally change your day and always come at the worst time. It seems like there are some days when you just hope you'll flat so you can stop and change it or just call it quits. Then when someone asks how it went you can say "Oh, I flatted" rather than "Oh, I sucked". That never happens though and you always flat when you are feeling good and think you can put together a good ride.

Before last nights Draper ICUP race I had been close to 2 years without flatting in a race. I guess my time was up. I think the last time I flatted in a race was two years ago at Deer Valley in what I would say was a breakthrough race for me. I actually rode with Bart the whole race and we were about 1 minute behind Eric Jones. That was after a year of getting shelled in the pro class and of course I flatted with about 20 minutes to go. Still managed 3rd I think. Anyway, enough reminiscing.

Not that last nights race was going to be anything too special but I was feeling good and riding comfortably up the 1st lap climb with Mitchell in tow and we got a solid gap. He charged around me at the top and I started the dh a few seconds back. Then I heard the dreaded pssst pssst pssst. Tried to get some stans to go down in the hole but didn't have any luck. I ended up throwing a tube in and got back on course in probably about 10th. I got back in to a rythym after a few minutes and decided to make a charge. Got all the way to 2nd which I was pretty stoked on. Just aired up a new Conti Mtn King Protection 2.2 which has a thicker casing.

I am moving in with Sammi next week- looking forward to it (not the move itself- I hate moving) but at the same time will miss living at Ty's. She has no idea what she is in for...

photo blog

its 90 degrees? Time for a 1-piece of course...


classic






tons of snow up there still


tim sliding on hos back down regulator in a 1-piece
for the debut of "slider sunday"


ice cream season! here's what happens when a milk shake
just won't cut it. dryers has a new flavor out- chocolate chip
mint brownie. how could it get any better?

cali

oh boy, southern california. half way through a work trip and having a pretty good time. spent a couple days in reno, which isn't as bad as I thought it might be. the company was having bike to work week, and the rental car I ended up with was a black V8 dodge charger. pretty funny rolling up in that when everyone is out front chilling on their lunch break and tuning bikes. aside from meeting 20 or 30 new faces and getting 100 different questions answered, the reno highlights were a Trader Joes trip and heading out to Truckee to hang out with Hoyer and his wife. Truckee's a pretty rad place, Hoyer's house is up on a hill with these amazing, huge pine trees in his yard and throughout the neighborhood.

flew to lax yesterday, and spent two hours in awesome traffic driving to Ventura. avoided the in n out gut bomb on the way and had a decent sandwich for lunch in some upscale town where everyone's trying to look like movie stars while walking their little yapper dogs. Ventura's not as small or chill of a town as I thought it'd be, but the hotel's right on the beach, and good surf is right there. paddled out for a couple hours last night, and a couple more this morning. brought back awesome Australia memories, and was SO much fun. definitely one of the only real drawbacks of living in salt lake is no surf. The skiing and biking does a pretty damn good job of making up for it though.

alright, nap time, and then time for a tour around town on the cruiser bike and an afternoon surf. AND trying to get the brain ready for learning overload for the next 4 days.
/ty

dehydration station

Got a nice reminder about hydration today- in the form of the worst cramps I've ever had on the bike! The Soldier Hollow ICUP is usually a tough one for me- its still pretty early and probably requires the most fitness of any race. After a tough week with less than 2 hours on the bike though not much rest I didn't have huge expectations- though Fox did pick me for the win. I felt good for about 3/4 of a lap and even put a little time on Bart. I actually probably went a little too hard. As soon as it came time to pedal again after the 1st dh I knew I didn't have it for the long haul. I had last lap cramping sensations (foreboding) that I've never had that early. Bart caught up to me on the 2nd and then when he lifted the pace on the 3rd lap I was flat. Then the cramps started setting in and progressed to full lock out mode. I had to shake my legs on the dh's and was just hanging on. Worst I've ever had by far.

Thinking back I can see why- woke up Tuesday with some sort of stomach flu- or food poisoning and felt nauseous. Turned in to chills, aches, fever, etc. Wasn't drinking enough water because I didn't feel good enough too. Wed. I felt OK so I went and raced the wed. night but was still a little off. That surely didn't help my hydration status. Thursday and Friday I worked a sunglass expo outside from 8:30 to 6 each day and didn't drink enough. Hydration is a cumulative thing and drinking water last night and this morning couldn't dig me out of that hole. It was a nice reminder though as its about to get a lot hotter!

I still managed 2nd and was over 3 minutes faster than last year even though I was chugging (VT term for going slow) at the end.

Wow, long post. I am just delaying going back down to the expo to pack up. Stopping for a milk shake on the way. Schirf was there taking photos- I'll post some when I get them. Drink up!

foiled by flats

I had big plans to head up to Snowbird to do some spring boarding this morning but with my truck tire looking like this I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, I could change it and put on my spare but I just don't feel like it. I need to start running stans in my car tires. I also need to repaint my wheels! Check out this piece of metal that got stuck in there...


Oh well- its nice down here. Sammi and I played frisbee instead.

Raced the Wimmer's icup yesterday in some SLOW dirt. It felt like slow motion racing. It was all loamy and squishy and felt like our tires were flat. I can't imagine how fast we would have been going putting in that kind of effort on some normal dirt. Some of the single track was tacky and buff and super fun to ride. Rode pretty much the whole race with Bart and was able to pull away on the last lap. I felt ok finally and hopefully I'll be able to keep getting in shape. Weekly racing starts up this week and I'll probably only be able to hit up the early ones in May before work travel gets crazy this summer.