Off season things...

It's been a while since I've had anything to write, and I thought an update of the off season was in order. I've not had the stars align for me to hit another cyclocross race yet, so I've not done another one. We did get out and ride Tiger before it shutdown for the winter, and that was awesome, we did a nice long ride on a great day, and ran into Ty and Nate at the top of the hill!

Tina and I joined some friends of ours and did a bike tour around Sicily, riding for 5 days on road bikes on some really beautiful roads. We totalled out at 160 miles for the 5 days, but it was definitely super fun. Not our last bike tour for sure.

In other news J, Clinton, Tina, Carl and I got together to talk about the new resume, and came up with some ideas. It came down to the wire again, but it's out there, and we're already starting to see some results which is awesome!

Despite the rain and dark Thursday night rides are continuing, we've actually even had more folks turning up than we did in the summer (something I don't understand, but whatever). We had 11 folks last week at St. Eds, with 7 joining for dinner afterwards at Shamina a great indian fusion place in Totem Lake!

Saturday the 20th of September, in Seattle, I'd predict that'd be a warm sunny day. Yesterday I'd've been wrong. It was wet very wet.

About a month ago we found out there was Cyclocross race running down the hill from our house at Marymoor park in Redmond, so we decided to give it a try, see what everyone was talking about. Tina elected on the advice of her PT to not race, her ankle's still not a lot better, in fact it's looking like we might be having some surgery there.

I should back up and say my training schedule has been off lately, a lot of time spent not doing the things I want, and then a week for work in NYC sent it off some, and it showed in the race. But enough excuse making, the fact of the matter is I suck, I'm in worse shape than I was during the XC race season, but I'm not near as bad off as I was last year, so I figured I'd be alright.

I entered the Cat4 race, which is beginner, there were like 80 people lined up at the start, for those of you who haven't cyclocrossed, you run multiple laps (like 5 I think) of a shorter course, and you basically go balls out for the whole thing. My race basically went like this, I lined up for the start near last, which I was cool with but I noted that I was the only person on a mountain bike for the whole field, really, I was looking at all these folks on cross bikes, thinking where the hell are the beginners?

The gun went off, and we took off, I went like mad to the first corner, trying to make up positions, but it was hard, there was a huge mass of people. The course, wound around the marymoore velodrome, there were spots where you had to get off and carry the bike, then jump back on, and keep going. My first lap was over in 8 minutes and some change and felt a hell of a lot longer than that, the next two laps fell in 8:29 exactly, so I was happy with that, but about half of the way thorugh lap 4 the leaders caught me, and I was pulled as we hit the finish line (that's how it works), so I only ended up running for 28 minutes or so! But it felt hard, like the hardest 30 minutes of my life, and I realised I'm going to need to work hard at 30 minute LT drills on bikes!

But I had a blast, depsite the wet, despite the finishing near last (there were 3 bikes actually running behind me, and a bunch of DNFs for god knows what), I'll do it again when it works out with my schedule for sure.

There it is the course for the Roslyn MTB Festival!

What a turn out, thanks to no conflicts with DH races this weekend  Nate and Kelly and Carl and his family turned up for the race today! It was awesome having everyone out to cheer us on. In addition we managed to setup camp with the new tent and even stick around to cheer Paul on. Along with the 529 crew, Corinna and Glen two members of our thursday night ride group showed up as well, Corinna was trying her maiden Indie race, while Glen held down the fort as his back has him out of riding at the moment.

The course started out with a soul sucker of a climb, which was supposedly only 800 feet (later data would confirm this as possible) but it felt worse. Coming out of the gate and starting into it was completely harsh, and a good number of folks were walking pretty quickly. After we climbed, we started to climb some more, and then again. A short fun twisty section led to more climbing before a really fun but much too short downhill section marked Roller Coaster. Spitting us out the bottom for a quick lap on the flat, and back across the line.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23108466@N07/2707800587/" title="2008-07-27 09-37-07_Canon EOS-1D Mark II_0014 by RKSarin, on Flickr"><img src="/dnn/Portals/0/http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3040/2707800587_9f365e6793.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="2008-07-27 09-37-07_Canon EOS-1D Mark II_0014" /></a> 

This should link to a photo of me leading into the first corner, a lead I lost very quickly but I figured I had to do it for the Photo OP

My stats for the race: 9.19 miles total, first lap 40:44 second 30:36, 1175 calories burned avg heart rate 159, and total ascent for the whole course 1842

Glen used my camera to take a bunch of photos, then I continued on to take pictures of Paul:

Check out the Flikr photos here

Results? I got 7th again, and Nate took first in his class, Carl 5th, I'll let Paul and Tina cover their races in their blogs. I didn't see the finish position for either Corinna or Kelly but they both had fun.

This past weekend Ed, JP, Larry and I headed up to Whistler for a guys weekend of riding. We basically left seattle around 5 on Thursday evening, stopped by Bellingham for dinner and were up in Whistler around 11:30 or so.

The next morning JP had to work so he stuck around the Condo while Larry, Ed, and I headed to the Park. Larry got a Norco A-Line from Fanatyk Co while Ed was rocking Tina's Nomad. As Larry hadn't been in the park in several years, and Ed hadn't been in since last fall we figured we'd take it easy, so we started out with a couple of runs down B-Line for a warm up, pausing to spend a bunch of time at the Intermediate drop center to get Larry started on how you drop the bike, and for me to work on my Drop-Foo which had deteroriated massively since last year. This was acutally awesome I worked back up to the large drop there, and then worked on the new ladder they have setup there, which is a great intro to the stuff you'll face on Smoke and Mirrors and Devils' Club.

Next up of course was Crank It Up, top to bottom, and getting Larry used to the idea of sticking the bike in the air. He did great, and by the second run down Crank It Up was catching some air on the table tops, and even dropping the box. Ed and I just worked on more controlled and higher air.

A break for lunch at the GLC where JP joined us as we watched a bunch of folks doing some Slopestyle stuff, and just hung out on the deck, a beautiful whistler day!

After lunch we hit some more technical stuff including one of my favourites Karate Monkey, we took the bottom of A-Line from here, and yup I'm still not ready for it, just can't commit to the large jumps, but I love the technical section at the bottom of A-Line, and we all at least rolled the small GLC drop.

The rest of the day we did some more Crank It Up, and I think a run on Smoke and Mirrors and Devils Club for fun! We all pretty much exhausted ourselves and so headed back to the condo's for beer, on returning we found that JP had gone for a quick spin, so we hung and waited for him to turn back up.

Now the fun bit, when JP Got back and locked his XC bike back up to ours out on the deck he somehow messed up the combo on the lock! We tried to guess for a while, and then headed out to elements for some amazing Tapas with beer and Martinis, and a side of watching a bacheolorette party, while making snide comments. Back at the Condo JP resumed hacking the lock while I dug out a Hacksaw and a pair of diagonal cutter to try and have a go at it with. Ed ended up cutting through it with the diagonals taking about a half hour to do so!

Saturday the plan was for a longish XC ride so we hit up Ciao Thyme Bistro for a big breakfast and then went back and geared up. Out to Lost Lake we ran up Peaches to Dyna-mo over the top, hitting up Pinnochios' to Zoot Allures and Toad's a great ride down and a nice warm up. 40 minutes later we were pedalling around the golf course and on to 99 to find Kill Me Thrill Me. It took about 20 minutes once we were in the vicinity to find the actual trail head (GPS marker was off slightly) and we stopped for some snacks and went in.

Kill Me Thrill Me pretty much did both, it took a long time to make the ride through there, while we stopped and sessioned some of the obstacles. Larry definitely owned the trail, riding almost everything, while the rest of us had varying degrees of sucess. I threw my mojo out early with some screw ups, and couldn't seem to get it back, although one particular rock face I finally got decided to get back at me when I attempted to hike back up it and go again, I fell hard on my left side, bruising up my hip.

From KMTM we wanted to find Green Lake Loop, and again the GPS failed us a bit there, but once we found it we started on up, relentless climbing with not very rewarding descents was my verdict, it was here about 5 hours into the ride that I sucked the CamelBak dry, youch! We still had probably 45 minutes to go before we were close to getting more water, so this was going to hurt a bit. What followed was some hard riding, and by the time we got back ot the lost lake loop I was done, climbing up into Toads I fell again, this time on my other side, putting a symetrical bruise onto that hip. At this point Ed called the ride, and I greatfully took Old Mill Road back to the little rental shack, and proceeded to swallow a large gatorade pretty much whole.

Saturday night we were very manly grilling up some steaks and following them with a great wine too, then we watched the new video from the collective called "Seasons" good fun. JP Is now convinced that the TV in our condo only shows mountain biking videos.

Yesterday (Sunday 13 of July) was the Padden Lake Indie Series race. I missed this race last year and didn't know what to expect. We got out to the race area early, perhaps an hour and a half before the race which was nice, everthing was relaxed a lot since we weren't filling new water bladders or anything like that.

A few people before the start of the race who had either ridden last year or pre-ridden were talking about the drops, some folks saying there was a 4 foot drop involved, and you should walk it. Okay, that sounds extreme for a race, but thanks for the warning. I checked in with Don, anything worse than tiger? Don said there was one sort of tricky one, because you had to go right/left/right in it, but nothing hard.

We had a LeMans style start, my first and it was quite interesting, I was a little shy of the hole thing, as I'm not a runner in the best of circumstances, four rounds of surgery on one knee does that to you, and in a set of hard soled SIDI Dominators running is not fun anyway. So I basically jogged over, and hopped on the bike. I wasn't the last to get to a bike but after I got moving, I ended up leaving the field where the start was last in my class. This didn't worry me too much actually as in the beginner class at least it's pretty easy to pass, and I can mentally keep better track of my position if I know how many folks I pass, plus it's less damaging to the pscyhe to pass people in your class rather than being passed.

Up the first section of hard back, some really nice double track and I over took my first victim, looking ahead I could see a line of at least five people right there, and we started on maybe a 5% grade climb. I took the next rider and could see Don and the next guy pretty close by in front. So I kept after them. a short while later we finished climbing and went on to some fun flowly single track which was awesome, we hit some drops, I stayed to the right on the first one and rolled down, really not a drop at all, more a slightly steep downhill, then a few more which were drops but my RockShox Revelation just ate it up. I passed Don and kept on going after the next dude, we're through three drops and I'm thinking, what was everyone talking about those were nothing, no big deal. I started trying to think of a way of telling Tina, don't worry about them, you'll be fine.

Next up were a couple of short steep up-hills that I couldn't clear, so I had to walk a bit, never my favourite.

Then the guy in front of me checks up, there's another drop, a little larger but nothing to make you panic, I roll it, after putting my foot down to wait for this guy to clear, pass him, and try and get clipped in, which I fail to do, and a few yards later there's another drop, this one curves, and has two trees ski-gate like in it. It's not super extreme but a little steep, and since I was off balance I clipped the first tree with my bars, which threw me in-to the second tree, I nailed by knee, elbow, shoulder, and right side, as well as slamming the bike into it. I was a little worried I'd sheared off the rear derailler. But I got on the bike shaking a bit and just kept riding.

Next up was a steep downhill over a rock which I slid down, sideways, not the good way to take that, and a few more smaller drops and steep downhills, but nothing bad, then a fast downhill double track, and we were done with the lap.

Lap two came up and I started to see another rider in front of me that I thought was in my class, I kept seeing him, and then he'd pull away and I'd catch him. By now I'd had my heart-rate pretty high, and was also trying to conciously pull it down a bit and not run out of steam, which I managed to do about halfway through the lap. So I backed it down a bit, then slowly ramped back up. Here I got passed by someone who I don't believe was in my class, I think he was the next class behind me, because he was moving pretty good. This was a hard lap because I was alone for more than half apart from occassionaly glimpsing the rider in front.

At the steep walking up-hills I finally caught the guy in front me, but we had two junior riders between us walking up the hill, they were having trouble hauling their bikes up the rocks and stuff. The organizers had folks out on the drops ot help the juniors get their bikes down but no one here for some reason (lack of volunteers?) So they held both of us up about equally, and I started the next section on his rear wheel, I finally squeaked by on the fast double track, having come down the drops and the slick rock right on top of his rear wheel!

Climbing at the beginning of the next lap I kept glancing behind me, but my foe had been vanquished I didn't see him again.

On the third lap I got caught by a group of the 45+ riders near the top of the climbing section and rode with them through the rest of the course, finishing right on their tail.

Net result I was seventh overall, I felt good, but had clearly dropped a bit of fitness since leavenworth, not unexpected as I'd had limited time to train. The next race is Roslyn in two weeks, and in between I'm heading to whistler with JP and Ed to do some DH Riding and some of the bigger XC rides there, so that'll help! Won't it?

I missed the Thursday night ride this past week. I was in San Jose giving Demo's at a Resarch Road Show, so I didn't get to ride, which kind of bummed me out. I also missed my Friday morning workout as I was on a plane on my way home!

So I was looking forward to Saturday morning. Tina and I were planning on heading to St. Ed's park, and doing some riding, some LT Threshold drills, and then having out sitter bring Audrey out later on so we could take her on a trail or two. 

Backup to Tuesday, at the health club, Tina had been working out with her trainer while I was working with mine. Her Trainer, Buzz, does some road biking, but has never tried mountain biking. Now this fellow is I believe 61, and so amazingly fit, it's incredible. When he goes on vacation he'll go hiking for ever, and a few months ago he went Bungee Jumping. For his 50th birthday he did STP, and I think for 60 he told me RSVP! Anyway whenever we've mentioned in spinning class that we mountain bike he tells us how insane we are. So last Tuesday we asked him to come check it out. St Eds is a great place for a novice rider. So Saturday morning as we're on our way to ride he calls us up to ask if we're still doing it. Sure we say, on our way there now, see you in the parking lot.

Out the window goes the training plan, but what was in place was a chance to introduce someone new to the sport, and it was awesome. We rode slower sure, but it made me think about my form on every tree branch, and every turn trying to show how it's done.  Buzz kicked ass, he tried to get over logs, and made almost every one of them. In fact his biggest challenge was a few of the up-hills, and that was mainly because he had almost bald tyres on the bike! Incredible! He had a great time and really enjoyed the ride, we had an awesome time showing off the trails, and just generally teaching someone new stuff. It was seriously cool.

Then after that we took Audrey out for her first more serious single track episode. She did awesome, running the up-hill seciton from the parking lot to the road. She had to get off a bunch going up hill, but did great over the roots!

At the 4 hours of SeaTac JP had a nice long talk with me about heart rates and pace. He showed me how if I went out at 165 bpm and killed it for 24 minutes I was beat and exhausted, and that the next time out we went out at 155 bmp and I was feeling so much beter stronger, and less fatigued at the end, and we were only 20 seconds slower. Apparently I did not learn the lesson.

Today was the Whidbey Island Mudder, for various reasons most of the 529 XC crew was not able to make it, so the contingent was myself, and Don in 34-44 Men's Beginner, and Tina in 19+ Womena Beginner (She's is so not happy about racing 20 year olds! I'm sure her blog will cover that!). Tina and I hooked up with Don at a local Starbucks (sponsorship needed?!) and drove together out to Mukilteo catching the 8 am ferry over to the island. We got to the course a bit before 9, and got registered and situated. We were all wearing the new kit, and it looks fab, plus Don and Tina this year are on yellow bikes (nearly matching) and so we looked all official and team-like. This had the effect of making us all extra nervous, thinking we had a lot to live up with.

A careful plan with my trainer and nutritionist had me eating some Oatmeal about an hour before the race start, and carefully drinking a lot of water. I hopped on the trainer with 30 minutes to go before the race, brining my heart rate up to 155 for 10 minutes, finishing with around 20 minutes to race start. I then changed the rear wheel on my bike for an XC wheel and went to use the restroom one last time. Then we got to the line, and the race was delayed, apparently a lot of folks had trouble getting early ferry's etc, so there were some late comers, who the organisers felt should have the oppurutunity to race, it wasn't a long dealy thankfully, maybe 15 minutes, but it did throw off my whole schedule a bit, c'est la vie.

So we finally start, with Don and I lining up side by side on the second row, and we crank up some double track, Don does a nice 'after you' and I end up in front of him on the outside, so I crank a bit more and somehow find myself in the lead. This lasts maybe 1/4 of a mile. Then the overtaking begins, and I drop back a few spots, Don repassing me. This group however stuck together for a good chunk of the first lap, not spreading out more than perhaps 20 seconds. I caught Don again in a little tricky section where folks in front of us were bailing their bikes and walking, while Don and I were clearing it with little drama, Don was politely asking them to get off the trail if they were going to walk and let us ride through, and I was baking him up, with an equally polite, come on guys! Getting back on my bike, I jumped in front of Don and took off. Now let me state here that my trainer had recommended I try some Perpetua in my camel back, it's got a good mix of carbs and protein and is supposed to keep you going on rides like this. The flavour I picked was orange vanilla and was not too bad to the taste. However I made the mistake of pouring the powder into my camel back, then adding water and attempting to mix by shaking, this does not work. For Tina I figured that out and blended hers with a blender and pour it in, she reports it was great, for me, it was a little shall I say CHUNKY? The result was that while I was sucking back water I was also getting some undesired chunks intheir that tasted sort of odd. The effect was a little unsettling. I was also pushing in the mid-160s on my heart rate so I started to feel it a bit.

I could almost always hear someone behind me I assumed it was Don, and kept pushing. The course I should mention was awesome the planner doing another stellar job of it, it was two laps, with 4.4 miles or so on the first lap, and a bit more single track on the second lap thrown in where we had orginally headed up the double track making it more like 6 miles.

About halfway through the second lap I started to slow a bit down, I was definitely feeling it, after a while I got my heart-rate to come down, felt better and was able to push a bit more, then I'd get too high for too long and have to bring it back down to go again.

In the end I finished 12th, this year the field has definitely gotten stronger, I don't know what the split times were, but Don finished 16th several minutes back. Tina finished 7th, perhaps 7-10 minutes out of first place, where a trio of matching youngsters were duking it out. She did awesome though riding most of the obstacles.

So I'm tired, and I'm actually rather happy. My stated goal for the season was top 5 finishes, I'm not sure that's realistic anymore, if the level of competition stays high, but I'm happy with the first race, satisfied that I've made signifigant progress in my fitness, and I know what to work on to try and get faster, and that's what I'll be doing.

To say I'm nervous about the upcoming race this weekend would be an understatement. I'm sort of terrified. I've lost a bunch of weight (28 lbs to date), gotten in better shape, and been riding frequently. I think I'm ready, but I don't know I am and I won't until we get there. then there's my bike. My extreme nervousness has led to Severe Hypochondriac Bike Syndrome. Every little squeak, everything that's not quite right, makes me think the bike will let me down.

Let me give you an example. Last Saturday afternoon Tina and I went over to Tolt Mac to do a 1.5 hour ride, including a bunch of loops around Little-toothpick to play with different settings on our rear suspensions and forks. Just to get a feel for what we liked, and what might work during the race. It was good fun riding and we learned some stuff. I learned that with pro-pedal on my rear shock squeaks, and that my fork makes a strange blow-off noise I've never noticed before, even when it's not locked out. So I freak a little and go on to the Fox web side to check out maintenace intervals on an RP23. You know what they are? It's kind of funny really 40 hours of riding, although if you ride in wet or muddy conditions they say maybe 8. 8 hours! You've got to be kidding me, that like three weeks the way we ride! Here's a shock I haven't done a lot too since I built my bike last year, and now I find I should service the air-sleeve every 3 months or so! Whoops! Cue emergency call with freakout to Nate. He calms me down tells me what bits to buy, and assures me he'll let me know when he can help out.

So Wednesday night I leave work at around 6 and head down to Bonnie Lake to rebuild both ends of the bikes suspension with nate. The RP-23 was cake, Nate had done that before so it didn't take long. The Revelation on the other hand was fun, it was all new, and we found a few things

1. It helps to have two people, there are things on a shock where you really do need three hands, two to compress something and the third to use the cir-clip removing tool for instance.
2. They're kind of messy inside, lots of oil even around the air spring side
3. A Syringe works great for delivering the entire dose of what's inside it, not so great for partial doses'
4. Shock oil smears when spooged onto a window or laptop in a manner that's actually quite funny!

 Anyway we did get it all put back together and cleaned and lubed, although we didn't have a kit for replacing the seals so we weren't sure it would work. Nate, it's better but not 100% so we'll have to try again with the Seal kit, and looking at the rebound side!!! Anyway my back end is better, but now I've got some major creaking which I actually think is because I've not redone the bearings in the bike yet. I thought about pulling a Midge and doing that tonight (two days from the race, with no riding inbetween) but then decided that if I did this and the bike squeaked during the race I'd be pissed, and start wondering what the hell was wrong with it. Where as if I leave it and race it thinking it just needs new bearings I won't be bothered.

Like I told you I'm kind of out of my mind nervous

Where in the world is Spring? That's the question I keep asking myself we've had snow in April (first time I've seen it here!) and unseasonably cold weather. I really can't wait for warmer riding, and I'm stoked for the DH Season at whistler. Why am I telling you this? Because Saturday Tina was working with the BBTC to do a BBQ at the bottom of Tiger mountain, a sort of here we are, this is what we do, to get the community more involved with them (Check her blog for the deets). So I decided to call for an XC ride on Tiger that day. I sent mail out to the usual crew, a combo of the Thursday night Riders and 529 and we got quite a group!

Riding were Ty, Nate, Kelly, Clinton, Ed, Adam, JP and myself. Adam was new to the group but instantly welcomed (possibly due to the fact that he was riding the Ex-Midge Ellsworth steed). Despite all predictions to the contrary Saturday dawned a beautiful day. The climb was better for me this time, almost fun. But the last 500 yards were on snow! From there it was perhaps a .5 mile or so of snow into the trail head. This was unrideable, although pretty much we all tried to ride it anyway. Along the way we hauled a couple of downed trees out of the way but overall the trail was in great shape. Clearing the snow we made it to the rock garden and started to ride down Preston, it was as usual, awesome!!!! At the bottom we discovered it was edging towards the 60 degree mark, and just a really nice warm day, a weird contrast to the snow we had just come through. Tiger always takes longer than you think it will! My orginal plan had me coming out about 12:00-12:30 to get Audrey from Tina who was working the BBQ and head home, I think we finally made it out at 1:30. Partially the snow, partially the flat tyre I got, but mostly we were just enjoying a nice paced ride, stopping and chatting, and having a blast. All the DH riders commented on how much fun it was and how they should ride XC more (They should!).

Out at the BBQ it was great, they couldn't have asked for a better day, there was a great feel around the tents, lots of folks coming by to see what it was about. The interesting thing to me was the number of hikers that came by for the free food as well, it occured to me how awesome this was, letting the Hiking community know the work the Mountain Bikers do to maintain the trails, can only foster good will and cooperation between the two.

Yesterday (Sunday 4/20) Tina and I along with Larry and JP from the 529 Thursday night ride went down to South SeaTac to checkout the 4hrs of Seatac event being put on this year by the BBTC. there are a few things about this "race" that I want to amke clear

• It's not a race. They claim it's for fun
• It's a relay so we rode in two man teams each doing a lap and alternating
• The forumla for figuring out if you win uses some weird ass math that involes using the square-root of -π  to compute some weird ratio, that apparently wasn't even clear to the organisers, doubt me check it out here: http://www.bbtc.org/recreation/calendar.php?event_id=6496 where they talk about it

Anyway we had a lot of fun not-racing at the not-race. And it turns out we did not-win the not-race as well, how we did not-win wasn't absolutely clear to us since we did in fact pass the winning team several times, but whatever. The end result was four tired grinning riders, on what turned out to be a beautiful day.

So unfortunately I was in Florence for a business trip at the time of the first Indie Series race and I missed it. I was sure to send messages of good luck via text, and thought about the team frequently on Sunday evening while they were racing (9 hours ahead here). I was definitely missing it!

On the plus side the first 529 social ride of the season was a great success we had 6 riders and one dog show up on a pretty nice day, and we only needed lights for about the last half hour of the ride, trails were in awesome shape, and good fun was had by all.

Saturday was all bikes all day. It started out with my replacing my severely gashed rear tyre on my road bike from the last ride, disassembling and cleaning the rear casette, and front rings, then installing a new chain to make it all happy.

Next Tina and I were scheduled to go for a road ride but we took a look at the weather and wisely bailed back to plan B heading back out to Soaring Eagle for another shot at Beaver lake trying some different trails. This time we took Vicki with us for the ride, and she had a great time jumping over everything in site and generally making me chase her down up every hill. About halfway through the ride it started to hail a bit on us, and by the end of the ride there was a good dusting of hail/heavy snow on the ground.

Immediately after this I headed to Clinton's place for the great 529 bike build up, the SRAM components had come in and it was time to replace some stuff, and build other things for the new season. I've got a new fork for my v10 (Boxxer World Cup Air) and some new brakes (Avid Codes of course) I am totally pscyhed for the beginning of the downhill season at the moment!

Tina's new XC frame is here, and we go the headset installed (thanks clinton) and the cranks, but we're still waiting for the last little bit of the SRAM order so her new SID shock isn't here yet, so there wasn't much else that can be done there.

For my XC rig I'd ordered up a set of X0 shifter pods, and some nice light Avid Juicy ultimate brakes, I've not yet installed these, it's going to have to wait for another full weekend of time, because I didn't want to get it half done and not have my bike for upcoming rides.

Leaving Clinton's at 9:30 pm on Saturday night didn't seem bad, as I headed home, until I got across the bridge and the weather kept getting worse. Getting near my house I found about 4" of snow on the roads and cars everywhere. I was driving our Honda Element, but Tina' had with uncharacteristic efficiency actually swapped the snow tyres of two of the three cars earlier in the week, meaning I was on a more summer oriented tyre, in a car with a fourwheel drive system which is really front drive until the front slips. The first main hill to my house was closed thanks to people abandoning their cars everywhere, ditto the second hill, so I went round to the next way, and although it was pretty cluttered with cars I was able to drive up it and keep going back to the house. All in All it took me 2 hours to get home, a drive that normally takes 25 minutes!

This week marks the return of the Project 529 Social XC ride, and we'll be heading out Thursday night for that, not sure how many takers we'll have but it'll be fun. 

Tina and I got out to ride Beaver Lake  this morning. Starting at Soaring Eagle we were trying to do a 45 minute loop, but it ended up more like an 1:15 and we bailed on the access road to get back. The trails were in great shape, and I felt really good. I was clearing hills I had trouble with when I last rode there a few months ago, but I'm still definitely not where I want to be for the race season so more work to do.

But it was simply awesome to get out and ride again! I've been thinking more about biking lately and just can't wait to be back riding regularly and getting to the Bike Park at Whistler.

I'm about four weeks into 20/20 now, I'm down nearly 15 lbs! and feeling stronger. My trianer Jerimiah has identified several key weakness's in me and we're now working to correct them so I'm hopeful for a great season.

The one thing I've not been able to do yet is get out and ride my XC bike in quite sometime, the normal Thursday Night ride keeps getting put off and postponed. Orginially because no one was around to ride it with me due to Tina's injury, then it just seems things keep coming up, no sitter, relatives in town, Tech Fest, and vacations, oh my. Never-the-less I hope to get them going very soon and ride more!

I did just spend a week SCUBA diving in Maui and spent most days working out as well, doing quite a bit of running because it was nice and I wanted to be outside, now normally I'm not a runner, it hurts the knees to much, but it was fun, and felt really great to be able to actually do it.

I'm not certain how my long blog entry for this got deleted, but I'm only just now coming back to see it missing.

I started Chilly Hilly immediately after starting the 20/20 Program at PRO Sports Club. This meant that I had since Thursday had only 1500 calories a day, consisting mostly of a dietary shake. I did get a special dispensation for more food on Sunday for the race, but I was definitely down on energy for the whole event. Where as last years to ride to work pace was solidly around 17mph I was having trouble staying at 14mph for the duration of the ride, where everyone dropped me.

The ride itself was somewhat tourcherous between lack of food, and not having been on the road bike in a long time meant my shoulders and back were sore, and my legs tired. The weather though couldn't have been better for us, and we had  a great 529 turn out, with J, Reb, Nate, Midge, and John Barr for team members, and several other folks SteveBu, and JP to mention but a few joining up for the ride.

For various reasons I was looking up bicycling quotes and ran across this one which I thought was awesome:

The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash. ~Juli Furtado

Well it's supposed to be? Thanks to the awesome job that Clinton, J, and Carl did on the Resume we've got a great sponsor list, so even though it's the off-season and our heads should be filled with thoughts of snowboard, skiing, and hot butter rum, I'm browsing web sites, and trying to spec out some component upgrades for Tina's Blur and my Blur LT for next year. All this is getting me super psyched about riding both DH and XC.

On the XC front Nate organised a ride last Sunday at the Worm, so he, Ty, Clinton and I went out, and had a blast. The worm is in pretty good shape, especially given the amount of rain we've had here in the NorthWest lately. Unfortunately I lost out on the Dab contest, I was feeling way off balance, and my rear brake pads gave out on the ride, meaning I was using the fronts only, which was and interesting experience.

Well it's my birthday, 38 years old today. This past year joining 529 and doing my first mountain bike racing, as well as seriously getting into downhill as been awesome experience for me, and a great year. This next year I'm looking forward to more of the same, but taking it all more seriously I've already enrolled in a 20/20 restart program at our health club to gain strength and lose weight. Our club is also opening a new performance center which is deidcated to improving athlete's performance, and I've done the eval for that and will be taking advantage of their training in the coming months.

Unfortunately though Tina took a fall at whistler on her snowboard a few weeks ago and separated her shoulder, which puts her on injured reserve for the next couple weeks putting a cramp in our push to start training for STP one day later this year, and doing a bunch of mountain biking early on, but I've spoken with Paul and I hope to ride with him until Tina get's better!

So those are my birthday thoughts as I sit here in Hawaii wishing for my bike!

-R

Wow what a dump. That's right Seattle got dumped on with snow yesterday, which is unfortunate as I finally had a rare weekend day with no family obligations to go out and ride, and had managed to rally a few 529'ers to head out to the worm with me. Unforutantely when I woke this morning Tina reminded me of the past Valentines Challenge Race, and that I was still waking up in the middle of the night hacking up a lung from my cold and basically told me to stay home. So no ride for me...

What did I do instead? Well I should've been giving the old Blur a good overhaul and switched it to the new Maxxis Medusa mud tyres I'm trying out on it, but instead I called a buddy of mine who came over and we attempted to beat Guitar Hero III in Co-Op mode. Got all the way to the last performance area when he had to head home, so I went back to my Solo game, got past Slash and put the controller down to spend some time playing my real guitars. All in all a nice relaxing sunday, tomorrow it's back off to the gym to continue my off season training.

Oh and about that our health club has a new performance centre opening up in January, so I've done some of the pre-tests for it, and I'm going to sign up to do some sessions there and see if they can help me with my goal of being a strong cycler.

In case I don't get back to the blog, happy holidays.

Last night we continued on with our weekly XC rides by hitting up Beaver Lake, now that's it's cold and dark we see who the true die-hards are, Larry, Paul, Don, Graham, Tina and I were the only takers with Ed out on injured reserve due to a Mach 5 exit from a burm in River Runs Through It which saw him go down a 14 foot or so river bank, and hurt his shoulder.

The ride was awesome, trails were actually dry, and covered with leaves.  We cut it at about an hour or so and headed over to Pomegranite for some awesome food, and thanks to Paul some bread pudding yum!

Can't wait for more riding!

This weekend Tina, Audrey and I headed up to Whistler for the last weekend of the DH Bike park being open. Alex, Clinton, Nate, Ty, Nate, Kelly, J, and Craig were all up here as well. It was a long drive up Friday night, but proved worth it. Saturday morning dawned cloudy but it wasn't raining, just really low clouds. Tina and I headed up for a first run down B-Line to warm up. Getting to the bottom we found Ty, Kelly and Alex in line, hooked up with them for a run down Crank-it-Up. The trails we're in fabulous shape and the end of that run had us hooking up with Craig and Nate. We then did some more run's down Crank it Up, to Ho-Chi-Minh for some big fun. After lunch the temperature dropped and the rain came back. So we took a run down Karate Monkey, and then decided to try Devil's Club. It turned out to be just fine, not as slick as I thought it would be so we decided to brave Smoke & Mirrors on the next run. Despite the rain it was in great shape and not slick at all.

Sunday morning we woke up to a lot of rain, so we spent some time watching the Shanghai F1 race, and getting all the gear we're taking home together. Around 10 we decided to venture out for a little light trail riding with Audrey. She got a new bike for her birthday with gears and hand brakes and was anxious to try it out around the lost lake trail loop. In short she rocked she made it all the way up Tin Pants to the look out, and then turned around rode it down. She did just awesome.

A Great end to the DH Mountain Bike season spent with good friends, enjoying the trails.

This past weekend, Ed, JP, Tina and I attended the Dirt Series camp in Whistler (http://www.dirtseries.com/). It was a great fun. They normally run these camps as Women only but a few times a year run a co-ed version of the camp, so we men can get the fun to.

The camp is organised so each day you go to a skill session between 9-1, then break for lunch and go on a ride from 2-6ish. The rides and skill sessions are pretty evenly divided between XC and DH focus so it was good for pretty much everyone.

The first day I did a skills camp based on doing skinnies, and north shore style stuff (Tail whips, dismounts, wheelie drops) and the instructors were all excellent, one of them was this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxTS4-TwT7Y, who was a real treat to watch ride. That afternoon we headed out to the trail called "River Runs Through It" to try and use what we'd learned. It was pretty awesome, Ed managed to do a lot more than I did right up until he wiped big on a small up and down transition.

The second day I decided to bring out the V10 and try and get more comfortable with it in the air. so I did some training on drops and slow/high speed cornering, followed by an afternoon on Crank It Up, and Karate Monkey down to the bottom of A-Line trying those things out. I finally got the hang of getting the v10 into the air on the Expert Jump Zone, and then did the second drop in the expert drop zone. I finished off by riding of the middle GLC Drop!!!! I know that's nothing to most of you folks, but considering htis is my first real season of DH biking I'm pretty stoked about it. I can't wait to get up there again, unfortunately it'll only be for one more time this year, we'll be heading up the last weekend that the park is open.

For approximately the last five years I've been running a weekly night ride after work, the list of people the announcment goes out to is probably on the order of 50 people, the largest turn out we've ever had was 14 riders, more usually there are four or five with a core group of Ed, Larry, Paul, Don, Tina and Myself. The rides vary location to keep things interesting pretty much the criteria being someplace we can reach by 6 pm if we leave work at 5pm, this makes our locations prety much Tokul, Griffin, Beaver, Tolt-Mac, Tiger, The Worm, and St Edwards, ocasionally we'll go to Cherry Valley.

Last night was a pertty light night, only three of us Tina, Larry and I turned up to ride at St Edwards, we hadn't been there for a while as I'd kind of gone off St. Eds, it is in my opinion an easier ride in terms of technicality, some folks refer to it as "paved" since it's very hard pack with few obstacles, and those obstacles have easy b-lines. Last night, however was a revelation I had forgotten the flow you can get into at St Ed's just riding at a good clip through the trails, with lots of short climbs to get you out of the saddle, followed by running downhills to enjoy, it was an absolute blast, and as put St Ed's back into the forefront of my mind as one of the more fun places to ride around here.

So remember go back to those old trails even if you think you're over them.

This weekend, Tina, Ed, JP, and I head to whislter for the Rocky Mountain Dirt Camp skills clinic two days of riding I can't wait!

Now that the XC race season is over what to do?

Mainly I've been having fun Ed, Paul and I headed up to Whistler to support the 529 DH Team and do some DH riding ourselves. I bought a large V10 frame and built it up, and am having a complete blast learning how to ride downhill, it's different yet loads of fun. This past weekend Tina and I were up and we spent Saturday riding with Clinton and Alex, tearing up the midlevel trails. Tina got to check out both a V10 and a Nomad to see if she could figure out a DH bike for her to have up there. I've finally come to turns with Heart of Darkness and like the bottom half as much as I like the top half. My favourite run on the mountain is probably still Crank it Up though!

Last night was once again our Wednesday weekly ride, and we headed up to Tolt MacDonald, one of my absolute favourite rides in the area despite the fact that I have yet to ever go there without getting hopelessly lost. On this occasion Ed lead a group of seven fearless riders through a fun twisty and fast route! I hit a personal milestone by riding It's A Bitch from the bottom to the sand trap without dismounting, first time ever making it that far!!!! The wednesday night rides have pretty much become integral to my survival getting me through a work week, and giving my brain something else to think about.

that's all for now, just a brief note to say we're still around even when we're not racing. I'm looking forward to the racing starting up next year, but also thinking about a fitness regimen that will allow me to compete a bit more effectively this time around.

Last race of the season, whew! It was fun, after a week of torrential rain here in the NW we were braced for a slog through mud and dirt for this race. Arriving at the site on Saturday morning it was actually not raining, and reasonably dry on the ground. We got our stellar 529 jersies in time for this race, so we actually looked like a team!

The descripton of the race claimed the following:

Set in the idyllic shadows of Mt. Rainier, this race offers a fast, fun, and challenging cross country mountain bike course that takes all levels of racers back to what mountain biking is all about. Greenwater is by far a favorite Indie Series course offering tons of up and down single track, 1.6 mile road climb, creek crossing, and killer downhill.

But it lied. That 1.6 mile road climb was slightly off, it was actually 5 miles, just a bit of a miscalculation could happen to anyone! This race was the hardest I've ever done in terms of physical exertion it took me around 1:45 to finish and my heart was never below 165 the whole time. It was also super satifiying after the Winthrop race, as I felt like I was actually progressing and not just barely making it.

On the uphill at some point the sweat pouring off of me was making it so I couldn't see through my glasses so I took them off and stuck them in my pocket, on a slight downhill teaser secti