Last year I spent thanksgiving on the trails at Heil Ranch. Great day on the bike and some Clif bars to feast on. Thankfully this year, in had the family here and would at least get some turkey in my belly.

sunshine, sunshine

Still, was nice to be back out on the same trails and was a gorgeous morning for a ride. Leaving home it was 21 degrees, but when I hit the trails it was 45/50 and would warm up to 65/70 ish. As quick as I hit the trails I was stripping down to shorts and a jersey.

this years thanksgiving trail food was much tastier

Managed to tack off a few hours on the dirt and get back home in time to catch some football and enjoy the day with the family. Couldn’t be thankful for more.

Black Friday, wtf is that? A big group of us decided to brave the cooler temps and the (un)crowded trails around Golden. No need to pepper spray anyone to get what you were after. It was found in the pain and suffering up the long climb to kick off White Ranch.

up, up, up

It was nice to meet some of the Epic teammates & ride some trails that I’ve never been on before. Long climb up to the top & then some fun swoopy stuff. Kept it easy and never fired the pistons, knew I still had plenty more days of riding ahead.

great views from up top

All together was a super fun few hours on the bike. We rolled back to the parking lot and a few brave soldiers decided to keep rolling and hit up some more trail. I peeled it back and went home to put some more time in with the ol ball and chain.

After some time on the dirt, pulled out the road bike for some easy base miles. Wsnted to just keep on trucking & racking up the weekend hours both saturday and Sunday. Managed to spill over. On the road bike making u turn on the road. Could only laugh at myself for that one. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve crashed on the roadie. Included countless races where seemingly everyone played a game of “pockets full of rosy, ashes, ashes we all fall down” except me. I always found it funny that everyone would crash when someone breathed on them on the pavement…something to be said for all those days spent flying through the woods.

naturally went looking for dirt

Wrapped up a great weekend of riding & rolling forward with the training plan. Bit of snow out there, especially up high and looking to bust out the snowshoes & have some fun.

how I felt after the long weekend

This past weekend the race was at Hartman Rocks in Gunnison, CO hosted by Western.  Good chance to really get in with the team, meet everybody and have some fun.  We chose to camp and found a pretty dang sweet camping spot.  Although it was behind the rocks and it got brutally cold at night.

Sunrise in Gunnison

Our team pretty much kicked some ass!  We won the Women’s B Short Track, then went 1,2,4,5 in the Women’s A Short Track.  Our Men went 1,2 in the Men’s A Short track.  The next day in XC we won the Men’s A in a sprint at the Line and in Women’s A went 2,3,5 and 2nd in Women’s B.  Gravity team rocked the house with a W in both DH and Air DH.  Super pumped for the team and looking forward to this coming weekend in Grand Junction

Women’s B Rider Ashlee Wilson shredding the field in the Short Track

The DH Crew

Women’s A Riders Abbey, Katie, Claire & Deidre ready to decimate the field

Abbey Mickey dropping the descent

The Men start the short track led by Kevin Kane

Kevin Kane working hard for Sam Morrison

Everyone was out cheering and doing the wave

Michael Larsen drops through the upper section of DH

Post race activities were load of fun.  2 nights of camping and camp fires.  There was no kumbaya singing, but we definitely had some fun and I’m looking forward to the upcoming races

Saturday

Saturday, hooked up with Todd and we railed around Naples area. Some super fun climbs and some incredible descents. As usual Todd tore me apart on the climbs (I promise I’ll show up fresh for a ride sometime!) and I taught him a few skills going down.

Ride was great a solid 4 hours with 2 rips down the DEC descent.

Groc Fest

After the ride with Todd, I headed into Naples for some Lunch and some grocery shopping. Had I been 10 minutes earlier I would have caught the group ride. No big deal though as I was already hosed from earlier. Though I did have to go pick up a dozen or so riders from the bottom of the tower drop and drive them up to OCP. They dropped a bunch of crushed stone on Gannett hill and no-one wanted to ride that stuff.

The evening was filled with the usual debauchery that occurs when you mix bikes, beer, bands and brisket. Schwarty’s brisket is good stuff and I think I must’ve eaten a good 5lbs of it. The band rocked out all night long and I even made my debut on the cowbell along with a full on cowbell solo. I may have a future as a musician, if I can only keep some tempo As usual you combine beer and boys and there were a few man-challenges thrown down on the playgrounds and even in the barn (my upper body is sore today!). I dutifully retired so I could get some sleep in my car for Sunday’s ride. I completely forgot my camera and wasn’t about to head back down to camp to grab it and walk back to the pavilion…

Sunday

Well, a little bit too much debauchery had us up late and tired for Sunday’s ride. The route plan quickly got shortened and we even shuttled it to skip all the climbing.

We climbed up the backside of Bristol Mt and hit Radar’s new piece of Singletrack. All I can say is friggin awesome. Rippingly fast fun flowy and long singletrack that shoots you out onto the fire-roads for a 70kph descent!!

After Bristol it was time to head over to Stid Hill

Perfect day, perfect riding. Couldn’t ask for much more. Glad to get out and hang with some good friends for the weekend. Times like this past weekend are the real reason we all ride bikes!

Off to interbike wednesday!! I’ll be updating via twitter (see sidebar) with loads of pics!

Tuesday am I did some solo cross practice at the local rec center. Cornering in the wet grass, dismounts/remounts and even some sand pit/loose gravel riding. Lizzy even got to run along with me. Though she figured out my loop wasn’t very big and started short cutting and realized there was no reason for her to jump the barriers. Some more cx practice and maybe I’ll kick off my season next weekend!

Night riding and having fun on the trails is what Fall is all about. Heading down to Naples area and shredding gnar when the trails are in primo shape is the greatest part q out bike riding. When you share that with your buds, nothing better. Hit up a solid night ride with Chad and Hanggi this past Wednesday night. I don’t think HiTor has ever been in better condition. We railed it and had a blast. Though no pics cause my camera turned some kind of shake fix or something on and all my pics came out blurry.

I’m heading back down tomorrow for an early am ride and will be down there all weekend for the Groc fest. Some good times on and off the bike to be had. I’ll be packing the camera and vholdr for some footage. Will try to get an update Saturday afternoon, but no promises!

I managed to get myself in gear and do a cross race this past sunday. Nothing like lining up against the pro/1/2 guys having very little time on the bike, at altitude and a lack of fitness. Somehow, I mistimed the start and was spit out the back immediately. I swear I never heard a countdown or anything similar. Chase hard, run up the sand, ride in the sand, run up the sand. It was a tough course, I ended up flatting at the start of my 4th lap and called it quits. At least I wasn’t in last place though. So as if that wasn’t enough, I went and signed up for the Boulder Super Cup Weekend, 2 UCI races in Boulder this weekend, Running with the big dog’s again! Hopefully I’ll do a bit better.

Speaking of dog’s I managed to get Lizzy out on her first trail ride since she broke her pelvis. I took her over to Green mt. on the singlespeed on Monday. I’m guessing the loop was about 12-14k, but some good climbing. This isn’t east coast trails, as she’s stuck running the whole time and no place for short cuts. But, she did great! Even when she saw a herd of mule deer, she managed to heed my command and not chase!! Maybe that truck she hit, knocked some sense into her!

Today was a bit of an epic day. I was in Boulder at 8am for the group cross practice ride. There was around 100 people or so! We rolled over to the Elks club in town and did a nice 25 minute or so effort. Mine, was cut short as my tire was soft and I had to steal a pump and get some air in it as I was banging my rim all over the place and didn’t have a spare tire. After some air in the tire, I managed to get some good quality work in. Shortly after we re-grouped and headed over to North Boulder Park and did a quick loop on the grass. I felt much better at that then at the Elks course, but I’m still getting used to the high intensity efforts.

The ringer for the day was the road ride with Jeff Kerkove. We met up after the cx ride, and he dragged me up Sunshine Canyon to Gold hill. Head over to his site for a nice video of me suffering in my 39×25. I need a compact.

How Badly? Here’s my cadence from the ride

The little town on the top was pretty cool, and had a nice little store with some awesome homemade goodies and a kick-ass cast-iron stove!

Little Village of Gold hill

At least when I was grinding up the hill slowly, I was able to take in some epic scenery

Wasn’t the only one suffering though!

Tomorrow night should be interesting, gonna meet a group for a night ride at Green Mt!

Things have been hectic, and I’ve taken a few days off the bike to unwind. As a result, yesterday was perfect weather day for a little boat riding. Seeing as it’s my last day to fit in a boat ride I obliged and my father and I headed out onto Seneca Lake for a slow cruise.

The lake was incredibly calm, and we just cruised down past all the houses and hung out south of the state park just off shore. Downed a few beers, chatted and relaxed in the sunshine. Couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I even got to drive the boat back (I had to give captains duties back, when the William Smith Crew Team was entering the harbor at the same time as us). It’s actually surprisingly easy to drive.

So after all that relaxing, I guess it’s really time to get down to business. Start packing up, laying down my itinerary and get some last minute errands done this week

Currently playing in iTunes: Dancing Choose by TV On The Radio

Oh yeah, yesterday I spent 3.5 hours in the dentist chair getting a root canal done. Took a while, but the infected tooth is fixed and the pain has ceased, just means I’ve got to get it crowned when I get to CO. Anyone know a good dentist out there?

Got there with plenty of time to play with my nephew Peyton, eat some gnocchi with homemade sauce by Grams and watch a movie. I managed to get a great night’s sleep in and then get the the race right on schedule. However, I didn’t really get a great warm-up in. Being as the race was new and recently scheduled it meant a small field (3 of us in the pro class), but it did mean we were all gonna get paid! That however didn’t mean I didn’t race my ass off.

The race started with a little prologue section with a climb, then onto the main course and up the access rd. Suffered a bit on the start and was struggling on the first lap, trying to get the legs together. I ended up losing sight of 1st place as he disappeared in the 1st section of singletrack. I surged hard, started to feel better and raced well over all. Race was a bit short at 1:40, but every one of my 4 laps was within 30 secs of each other, so I was at least nice and consistent. I did bag $250 for 2nd!! Everybody better hit this race course next year as it was one of the baddest and best ever!

Sunday (after a long drive home saturday) I headed down to Ellicottville for the Roots, Rocks and Ridges race. I think the last time I managed to do this one was about 5 years ago. There was good number of people and it was a great day for racing. Course started with a road prologue while we were lead over to Holimont and the start of the climbing. Didn’t mean it was truly neutral though as we were clicking off a good pace on the road. Knowing the climb was coming up, I got near the front and stayed there trying to shake the legs out from the prior days efforts. Hit the climb and when it turned to dirt a small group of us split the main field. I was sitting at the tail end of the group around 4th/5th and came off on the climb prior to entering the singletrack. I was busy closing the gap to the rider in front of me, when I felt my rear tire was real squishy. I jumped off to throw a co2 in and didn’t do much. I decided to tube it and it took me forever to get the valve stem out. Finally go the valve stem out, tube it and the co2 barely puts any air in, WTF!?! I spend forever hand pumping my mini pump (luckily does both), while getting passed by everyone. I got the tire up and ready to go and ended up behind a large smashed together group near the back. It was tight singletrack and I really wanted to get back to the front. Riders were dabbing and falling all over the place, I ended up having to use the “pro” lines to pass quite a few of the riders. After a few minutes being stuck behind them, I finally got free and clawed my way back up. I was surging and flying through the singletrack.

I was actually feeling really great overall. I managed to catch a bunch of riders. I did have to stop at one point and put some more air in my rear as it was still feeling soft. I shot up again and was catching more riders. Any chance I got, I was doing the Big Ring Challenge and hammering through the singletrack. I was creeping way up in position and just was catching 2 more riders when I realized I had a broken spoke. Took some time to get it out of the rotor and bend it around so it wouldn’t get caught on anything. I managed to catch and pass back one rider, but ran out of trail catching the other.

Total time according to the powertap lost by flats and spoke: ~8:30. Unofficially according to mom, I was about 9 minutes down on first! I finished in 10th place, which I thought was incredible considering how many riders initially passed me. It was a great course and good ride and was happy to end my season on a strong weekend of racing!

Now it’s time for ‘cross

Currently playing in iTunes: Revelry by Kings of Leon

He-Man and She-Ra were the choice for Lindsey and I. Our Costumes are almost entirely made out of duck tape. Loads of fun!

We had quite a large group (7 of us) so it was a pretty good turnout. I had hit the road for a short ride prior with Lindsey so the legs were ready to go. (I still gotta work on getting her up for some night riding My overall fitness has dropped of a bit, but my head is crisp and clear so I think that more than makes up for it.

The Muffin Tragedy

Tragedy uncovered at the Alpine Bakery early this morning.

So I went to get my usual cup of coffee and blueberry-yogurt muffin this morning and it was awful. Apparently the cooler was mistakenly unplugged and the muffins *gasp* had gone bad! Man was I bummed. I hat to take a only slightly less delicious chocolate chip (which was supposed to be ginger, so you can imagine my suprise). Hopefully tomorrow everything will be back in order and I can resume fulfilling my cravings.