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.

recovering from the "recovery ride"

I was planning on riding yesterday, and wanted to head out for a couple mellow hours to clear my head and enjoy the good weather. Alex raced on Saturday was meeting up with a couple other guys who had raced too...ended up being bart, bob, ohran, and jared. Alex talked me into it, and told me what a tough day everyone else had the day before. I've been riding a bunch for the past couple weeks, but nothing really before that on the bike, but i've been feeling pretty good. SO I figured what the hell, it'll be cool to ride with Alex and some new guys. woops. bad idea. long story short: hung on pretty good for the first part of the ride, did ok on a steep as shit climb, had a fun dh, bombed shoreline to dry creek, blew up climbing dry creek, made my way to the top of bobsled, had a sweet dh, found out I missed dinner at Lesha's dads house, managed to make it home on the road in one piece, took a nap, and finally had some amazing mac and cheese from wild oats.

So now, as the title suggests, I'm recovering from the recovery ride. probably the hardest I've gone since racing last summer before I hurt my knee. I guess if there's good new it probably helped me get into decent race shape if I can stay on it with a couple more rides. bad news is that I might have to miss my two favorite icups because of work trips -- DV and solitude. bummer.

While I was still thinking coherently up the first climb, and still had my sense of humor, I came up with a short list of comparisons from the ride, and signs at the beginning that I might not have the legs to keep up on the ride:
1. only guy in a jersey advertising beer
2. only guy without shaved legs
3. only guy on a bike worth less than 5 g's retail whose name doesn't have the word "team" in it's name
5. (i thought this one might actually help me out) only guy who didn't race for 3 hours the day before

maybe the list isn't so funny any more now that I'm off the bike, kept me entertained for the first part of bart's climb though. Definitely motivates me to hit it again and keep up next time. I don't think I could ditch the beer jersey or drop a wad of cash on a new bike, but maybe i should try the shaved legs routine. it better make me damn fast if i do to make up for the hard time i'll get from lesha.
/ty

5 Mile

You know its not going to be your best day when you show up to a race and realize that you forgot your socks... and only brought one arm warmer.

Gave the 5 mile pass race a try for the first time yesterday- ouch, thats a tough one. 1st lap I was feeling ok riding in 2nd for a while chasing down Dave Welsh. Bart came up to me and took over the chase. We caught up to Dave and then all hell broke loose for me. I misjudged the steepness of a little hill and had it in the wrong gear and those guys got a gap. Then I took a wrong turn and lost about 10 more seconds. Shortly after I got a side-ache and skipped a few gears on a climb. That blew me psychologically and I started getting discouraged. I managed to get back in to sort of a groove but couldn't kick my side cramp and could barely drink anything for the 1st 2 laps. I kept thinking- shoot, I am going to pay for this at the end! I did too on the 4th lap. I was probably just under a minute behind Dave (Bart was long gone) and gave it some gas to try to close the gap. I cramped up pretty good and with 10 miles to go I had to back it off and limp home. I managed to hold on to 3rd though. Bart came off his death bed and worked us over!

Off to Boise tomorrow morning until Thursday. Can't wait for Motel 6!

shred alert!

all 3 of us headed out on shoreline tonight - red butt to bobsled and back through campus to hit the two sets of grass rollers. ripped it! first time I had been out on my big(er) bike and it was pretty sweet. kind of a beast to pedal, but bobsled was awesome. Schirf was having a blast on a new Rocky Mountain prototype until he stacked it pretty good after bobsled. having fun riding the lower trails for now, would definitely be bummed if we're still in the same situation a month from now. Not sure when I'll start racing, but DV and Solitude are probably the two best and it would suck if those were cancelled.

starting a new job in a week -- crazy crazy -- should be a good time though, I'm stoked. /ty

early races?

I am starting to wonder about some of the early races this year. I had to go up to Logan on Saturday to work an event at a shop up there and thought I would check out the trails up at Sherwood Hills in the evening on the way back. Driving up Sardine Canyon on the way up I started to see a lot of snow- by the time I got to Sherwood there was a pretty solid snowpack. We're going to need some hot weather if thats all going to melt before the Wimmer's ICUP in two weeks!

What about Deer Valley and Solitude in 6 weeks? I guess a lot can happen in that amount of time. Maybe we can earn points by shoveling the tracks out before the races... Anyway, here's to some warm (but not too hot) weather.

windy rim

My parents were in town for a few days last weekend seeking refuge from the long Vermont winter and looking for a little sun. With crappy weather in the forecast up here we packed up my truck Saturday morning and headed for the desert. I had convinced them to rent a jeep and drive the White Rim while Tim and I rode it. I was having second thoughts on Thursday and Friday though, as both Tim and I had apparently picked up the same cold at the RJD2 show a few days before and there were some pretty high winds forecast. All the pieces were in place though so we went for it and Tim met us in Moab from Coors Town, USA (Golden CO.)

It was pretty windy when we arrived Saturday afternoon and we were a little worried. "Can't be any worse than Brian Head in the mud a few years ago." we said. "Can't be worse than the E100 with tendonitis." Tim said. Well, it wasn't but it was pretty bad! We rode the whole thing from the top of mineral bottom road counter clockwise and had 20-30 mph sustained headwinds all the way south (with way higher gusts) and then on the way back the wind swirled around the canyons and messed with us. It felt like we had about 15 miles of tailwind out of 105. We made it though, 7 am to 7pm. Climbing Shafer with sand blowing in our faces just added insult to injury!

My parents had a great time though and loved it. My dad rallied the rental jeep. I've just been laying low and working since. Here are lots of pics in no particular order

The love...


the hate...



no comment



the parental units


lunch!



Ned in the jeep

if it looks like we are leaning thats because of the wind

soaking up some rays

check out the coat my dad found at the DI

vids

so speaking of Moab, Alex and Hannah came back with a sweet video of alex riding a little ledge drop at the end of porcuipine. After squealing his brakes into the drop, he hits the drop well, but then goes off course and jumps over his handle bars and runs it out down the rocks. it was hilarious. they showed it to me at 8 in the morning on hannah's camera, and after watching it three times i accidentally erased it in my drowsy haze. damn. so in tribute to that video here's one that almost as good of my friend Dave hitting a rail at Mt hood a couple years ago...


sorry again for erasing the vid man!
/ty

daydreaming

Trying to get some work started but i keep daydreaming looking at some more pics from Moab that Hannah sent over.


Won't be doing any of that this week... there's an inch or two of snow at out house and its only supposed to get up to 40 today.


I raced Cholla this weekend- went ok and I felt a lot better than last year when I dnf'd, then laid on the ground for an hour or two, made it back to my truck and barfed. I ended up 3rd- not the best ride but I'll take it. That race is a good character builder because it sucks so bad!




Doing this on Sunday... can't wait!

Moab

Hannah and I went to Moab this weekend to ride Porcupine Rim. We lucked out with awesome biking weather and got to ride it twice.

We pulled in late Friday night and pretty much camped on Highway 128- I think a diesel truck drove by our tent about every 20 minutes all night. Luckily we got a slightly better spot for Sat.


On the shuttle














Doing the chicken dance



































This is pretty crazy- they have
been burning the tamarisk trees down
and clearing them out. I think they found a
beetle that just kills those trees. I know they
weren't native but they did provide some good
secluded camp sights. Now its all open and you feel like you are at a KOA- or a junkyard or something.


Fun stuff - Han has some better pics so maybe I'll post some of those when she send them over.

bike accounting

Here's another addition to the bike quiver- though with two sold so far this spring that brings me right back to even. Next week I'll be selling my Yeti after I ride Porcupine rim on it this weekend!

Out with the old...

and in with the new














I am actually selling my Titus so if anyone knows somebody who is looking for a fast race/xc bike point them in my direction. I am asking 3k- its in great shape with full 07 XTR. Full handmade ti frame has interchangeable dropouts for a SS option. I am trying to avoid e-bay if possible.

Kind of wish I was in California racing this weekend- with the price of gas what it is and no plane tickets for under 300 bucks I think I'll stay put. Too bad it just snowed on shoreline because that was getting really good.