JasonHilimire.com

I’ve pretty much lost steam with this thing….. Twitter is seems to be replacing thing nicely and easily. I barely even read blogs anymore, if it doesn’t fit in 140 characters or contain a pretty picture I’m probably not paying attention. If I feel like it I’ll start posting regularly. If I don’t well find me on twitter.com/jasonhilimire

Here’s what’s happened:

Rode my mountain bike in the snow with the dogs, it was fun but the snow was actually deep in a few spits

I rode my road bike some, some on the roads some on the trainer… yah that’s about it

It’s official, for next season I’ll be splitting up my time between road and dirt. On the road side I’ll be linking up with Minerva Design Cycling (official announcement here).

I’m super excited to be racing with a great new up and coming Rochester based road team for 2010. I’ll also be helping the fellas out with training advice and how to use those newfangle powermeter whatzamagics to make em even faster for this season. GVCC and beyond, better be on the lookout for the Red Train this season!! Choo Choo baby!

A few years back I split my season up between dirt and oad racing and have missed many a friends and the camaraderie of road racing. While I’ll still be shredding up the trails at all the same races, look to find me out racing and training on the road this season and sharpening up that razor blade.

Here’s to a great season with my new teammates!!

See Day 1 here:

Day 2 El Reto de Quetzal

Upon arriving back at the hotel from day 1’s journey. I was in such a distorted state I could barely function. I quickly cleaned up and hit the hotel for lunch. I had to eat. HAD to eat, so much so that I couldn’t actually function until I ate a giant plate of pasta, bean soup, couple of cokes and multiple baskets of bread. There’s hunger and there’s ravaged hunger! After that it was simply time to sleep and wait to eat again. The hotel was gorgeous with an amazing view overlooking the lake

I felt pretty hosed after the prior day’s efforts and day 2 was looking to be another epic day. While short in stature it had plenty of vertical, taking us up above 9500ft!! With all the climbing on tap I was wondering how the legs were going to possibly feel and would I be second guessing my 26/36 dual chainring?

The first 10k was a road climb, right outta the gate tires started on the incline. Surprisingly I actually felt really good. I like the long climbs (as much as you can ‘like’ a climb), especially when you’re not running full tilt with such a long day on tap. As usual the front teams took off the front leaving us gringos to grid away till we hit the village at the top.

I was feeling pretty good and sat out to ride some nice tempo up the climb, Todd who had a great day prior was suffering a little bit with effort out of the gate. So I yo-yo’d up and back for a bit with a few small groups. As cool as it was (mid/low 70’s) it was extremely humid. I made the right choice to go pack-less and even had to fully unzip on the climb as I was dripping in sweat. I woulda been dryer had I jumped in the lake.

We continued to climb till we hit the top and blasted down a dirt/concrete road. Only thing with blasting down a super fun fast switchback road, is the locals are still driving up and down the single car wide/blind corner road!! There were more than a few close calls of descending at 65kph and slamming on the brakes around the corners so we don’t collide head on with truck!

After the first descent it was time to go up a bit more (see above). This time we paired up with the Green Machine. Trisha and Steve, a canadian team who were leading the mix category race and gave us a beat down the day prior. Trish is a crazy good climber and spent the day bolting off the front every chance she could, while I gave chase and Todd/Steve were stuck behind yelling curses at us while we climbed away. We had some good laughs and great chats up the climbs together and spent a good majority of the race and after each day hanging out (there were only 4 anglophone teams).

Once over the top of the 2nd climb we had an amazing descent into the valley. Some nice cliff edges and beautiful views of the gorges and surrounding mountains. But as had been par for the course it meant a nice long climb out. The climb out was actually fun as it had some nice steep sections and some good rolling recovery sections. Todd was ready to roll at this point and we flew up the climb passing a few team and making up some ground. As far out as were were from any village, there were still locals kids here and they even were running along side and pushing me up the climbs. I got a kick out of it cause they were all too far gassed to offer any help to Todd!

Though once out of the valley climb it was back onto a long grind dirt road climb. After the fun of the previous singletrack climb, it was actually kind of hard to really get ourselves into a rythmn and get moving. And lo and behold the Green machine like the crazy robots they are churned away and pulled us back in.

A quick stop at aid station #2 for a refuel and were off to make the long singletrack hike a bike to the top. This trail seemed to go on forever and with all the climbing we had done mixed in with the elevation, it was gnarly to try to get moving and just put down any efforts. There were more than a few pit stops to catch my breath as I felt like I was just going to black out from the fatigue and the elevation.

Once we got to the top things opened up a bit and we were able to get back on the bikes and rolling.

I tried out my trials skills on a very tiny off-camber rock section. Got the front wheel up and across the gap, but the rear wheel slid and some big consequences. Off the side down into the ravine I went. A good 20 foot fall, somehow I jumped off the bike landed on my feet, but was moving so fast I had to jump again and again each time going down about 5-10 feet and finally slowing down by jumping into some bushes. I came out unscathed, but had the adrenaline flowing now!

Another pit stop at the aid station for some more of that delicious watermelon and still had 45 more minutes of climbing!! As we topped out at 9580ft of elevation it was time to do nothing but go downhill!! A super fun long descent all the way down the other side of the mountains we had just climbed. The descent was super fun singletrack, rocky, rooty and even got some crazy greasy clay sections with loads of ruts.

At one point were flying down the descent and came across a group of locals carrying firewood. Generally a good Ola! gets em moving out of the way, but for some reason this time they didn’t hear or decided they weren’t moving! Well it was a super greasy clay descent with loads of ruts everywhere and we were descending around 50+kph and they happened to be walking the best line. I moved off the line across some ruts and suddenly my rear wheel came sliding around and was know in pretty darn even with me and within my peripheral vision. Seeing your rear wheel at that speed isn’t usually a good thing. I started to think about how damn hard the crash was going to hurt as the wheel was sliding around and then, BAM! the wheel caught the side of a rut, straightened right out and I was on the move again. Todd who was descending right behind me could barely believe I pulled out of it, I jokingly bragged it was all in the skills (the chamois stains proved I was scared though).

Once off the singletrack it was onto some farm road descending for what felt like a good 20-30 minutes. Super fast 50 kph, slightly downhill banging it out at full speed flying along riding. It was the best part of the day, just churning the pedals away feeling like you had no chain. The road was pretty buff as far as no rocks or whatnot, but it was still dirt and bumpy making you really pick your lines at that speed. But it felt great to just punch it as hard as you could and feel like you were really flying. In fact the descent was so much fun, it made you forget about all the pain and suffering of going uphill the whole day.

Day 2 was in the books 5:45 of time on the bike. Grabbed our bags, showered up and grabbed some lunch as quick as possible. After the long lunch, it was back to the room for an hour of naptime and then right back to the restaurant to eat a 2nd lunch. We were quite famished and the first one barely touched us. Our 2nd lunch gave us some incentive to rest some more and then head to the dinner buffet where we gorged ourselves on anything we could find to fit in our bellies. Stage racing,,, ride, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep. What’s better than that?

Day 3 to come soon…we’re almost there!

Ok finally…not all but at least it’s Day 1

It’s not too often that you take your definition of “Epic” and completely redefine it. Most of the time the word often gets overused a bit, but I doubt there is a better term for the El Reto de Quetzal race that I participated in October 9,10,11th in October. I teamed up with local supa fast roadie Todd Scheske (who convinced me to go last winter). We put in lotsa miles on the 29ers down in Naples hitting up the trails and working on riding together.

I was a a little tentative and scared to head to Central America at first, but in the end everything worked out fine and it was actually pretty easy to get there and deal with customs. We arrived on wednesday prior to the race. Giving us some time to get settled, rest up, put the bikes together and explore the city of Antigua via bike. We rolled through the cobbled streets and markets with the locals gawking and staring at us and finally made our way out of town. We climbed up the highway out of the village up the mountain, but unfortunately we couldn’t find the way back down! This meant we ended up doing the ‘death descent’ down the highway using the shoulder into oncoming traffic. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been that freaked out on a descent in my life before. There are pretty much no rules for driving in South America and cars were whipping all over the windy blind corners, passing the chicken busses wildly and not even realizing we were there to try to descend down. Luckily we made it down without dying!

Day 1

Day 1 started us right in the City center of Antigua. Rolling out on the cobbled streets of the city, zig-zagging out way to the day’s first climb. Right away the fireworks hit and the front runners pulled no punches and lit it up the first climb. It started out steep and just got progressively steeper. The first parts of it were paved in the city and then we hit the dirt. With the slick clay it became pretty easy to justify hopping off the bike and saving the efforts.

Once we got up over the climb we did some rolling fast efforts through the farms. Lots of little ups and down that quickly took their toll. As we worked ourselves over on the bikes, the locals were toiling away in the fields, often rarely noticing what we even doing. (BTW Guatemalan produce is insanely large, cornstalks are 10-12ft tall and the carrots are as big as baseball bats!)

However, when we did come across and thru the several towns, there were loads of school kids with flags and plenty of enthusiasm to cheer us on. All day the kids and the locals yelled. “Animo, Animo, Animo!” It wasn’t till afterwards that we really realized what animo meant, kind of “get moving” or “go forward”. Every now and then the cheers allowed you to crack a smile through the grimace.

The reasons for the grimace were aplenty. For it seemed for many miles, the them of the terrain was insanely steep switchback descent, followed by an incredibly steep hike-a-bike climb out. We did this more than a few times. At one point, Todd and I were griping about the lack of noting that these were hike-a-bikes and someone yelled down, “What I don’t mark well enough, for ya”. Just happened to be one of the promoters sitting at the top chiding us on as we hiked up the climb.

After we made it through the hell section in which, I was multiple times sent into slumped over the bike/death march mode we proceeded to descend down the road, quickly. Continuing to roll through some small towns and making our way toward the final climb. I jokingly pointed and laughed as we rolled through one of the small towns to Todd, that we were heading towards what looked like the city wall. Well, it was a wall for sure and it was paved and we had to go up it. I’ve not seen pavement that steep, and for the first time I was forced off the bike and walk up a paved climb. I’m guessing it was somewhere in the mid 30% for grade, damn it was steep.

This finally brought us to our final climb of the day. ~8k of pavement in the sun. As hosed as we were at this point, we were no longer ashamed to stop and take a break in the shade. This was rough, but we were rewarded with a checkpoint at the top and loads of watermelon. If you’ve never done an endurance race, it’s worth it just to get the watermelon. Watermelon tastes so damn good when you’re hungry, thirsty and tired…

After the long climb we were rewarded with the gem of the day. The crazy descent into Panajachel. Riding the singletrack overlooking the lake and volcanoes across the lake. It was dam near vertical drop at some points right off the singletrack!

As we descended for what seemed to be ages, we came to the terraces and finally into the village.

Coming through the villages was on of the most fun descents I’ve ever done. Urban singletrack. We were descending through alleyways and corridors with very little room, and loads of continuous stairs. Zigging and zagging down and having some fun! The locals heads popping out around the corners and trying not to take em out.

By the end of the day, after 7:20 of riding I was never happier to be off my bike and finished. Though it was only 1 day down and we still had 2 more to go!

Find Day 2 here

Hit the local cross race up this past weekend. Spent the evening prior riding my bicycle up and down the hills of Naples valley guided by the moonlight till 2am. We only got lost a few times. Even had to cut through some alfalfa fields to figure out where we were headed. Was a gorgeous night so no complaints there.

The lack of sleep & fatigued definitely sucked en route to the cross race the next morning. Short warm up was all that was needed then off for a muddy hour of racing. Legs were suprisingly good and after a rider crashed, I has moved up to 4th. A lead group of 3 had escaped and I was stuck in no mans land giving chase. Let up a bit work with local crosser J-ro and proceded to rip off my rear dérailleur immediately. Thus ending my race and making for a long bike portage back to the car.

Oh well, that’s the theme of my racing this year. En route to Guatemala, let’s hope it goes better!!

What an incredible weekend in Naples. Weather was super all weekend long. Big rides, big views, big fun had by all the entire weekend. I’ll skip to it all and let the pictures sum it all up mostly.

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!

Yup folks, tis the season for the fun rides. While summer isn’t officially over it’s pretty darn close. Only 1 big race left on the mountain bike (el reto) and time to dial in the cross bike and cross fitness.

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!

Saturday, rolled down to Naples with Todd Scheske. Since he’s going to be my teammate for El Reto next month, I figured I better make sure he can ride a mountain bike . So nothing to do but take him on some of the toughest descents around….

The mountaineer/highlander was also going on down in Bristol so it was quite a busy biking weekend in the area. We decided to meet away from all the hustle and bustle and just get right to it on Stid Hill. A nice fun singletrack climb up Still Hill and Todd hung just fine, climbed up the 4 wheeler trail an then we hit the tower drop. Drops 900 feet in less than a mile, super steep and with it so dry was hard to keep traction on the descent. I decided to give Todd a break halfway down as my tire was leaking air. Stopped to fill it up and in the process, burned the hell out of my arm on my rotor and now have a nice tattoo of my rear disc. We finished off the death wall descent (literally the last 50 meters are straight down, kinda like HELLTRACK from RAD, but steeper and filled with rocks and roots and trees)

We got off Stid and hit the pavement up to OCP via Gannet hill, where Todd rightly showed me what he does best and that’s drop fellas on the road. Up and over OCP, we skipped Cutler due to time, down the road and up and over the Backside of Bristol Mtn for another long loose climb. Then down the snowmobile descent. To be fair the snowmobile descent gets super sketchy at the end, and the whole thing was mostly washed out making for a hairy descent. Todd hung tight all weekend and next saturday I’ll throw some more stuff at him. Rather than super steep, I’ll hit him with some super tech and very fast descents. Todd, how do you do riding Singletrack with 400ft drop offs??

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Chad and I hit up some killer trails more on the East side of Naples and the descents were ripping. I was completely Hosed by the end for sure

A nice crusher of a long climb off the bat up Parish Hill and over to the Hanglider drop got the blood flowing nicely this morning.

The Hanglider drop was in primo condition as compared to early spring and we ripped it up heading down the descent.

The brakes were screaming for a rest by the end and you could smell the pads burning and feel the heat coming from the rotors. I made sure not to touch them today!!

We charged up Italy Hill which is a great solid tempo climb all the way to the top and then turned around and railed it to the bottom. Braaap, Braaap, nothing like a 50kph singletrack descent!!

After Italy we climbed up the road, hit some Hi-Tor tech and then blasted down the DEC descent. Another great ride wrapped up and another solid weekend of riding.

Will do some cross practice this tuesday, then probably head back to Naples for some more climbing wednesday night and then back again for the weekend to throw down some big miles at the GROC fest. Then a few weeks of cross and shortly after will be off to Guatemala. So much for the season winding down!!

Similar routine to last weekend. Hit up some Dawn Patrol with Hanggi, and this time Jim-Jam Hogan joined up with us for our ride. We decided to shuttle them up to the top and Start from Ontario County Park (OCP) and then they’d grab their car at Parish Hill and head into work, while I continued my journey onward. Things started off nice and fun and fine, hit up OCP, Cutler, Closed road down into Naples and then climbed Parish Hill. We mad our way over to Hi-Tor and then ripped down the DEC descent and they took off for work, while I had some more ‘work’ ahead of me. Temps were picking up quite a bit now, and I really hadn’t eaten a ton of food, so I stopped into the local gas station, grabbed some fresh water a red bull and some food to continue onwards.

I made my way up East Hill and felt really good. In fact, I had to double check that I had actually climbed it as I flew right up it. I headed through Hi-Tor’s fire-roads and added some more climbing and descended down so I could climb Brink Hill. I flew up Brink Hill, and was still quite surprised as I usually suffer at the top where it gets ultra-steep, but I was feeling great still. A quick scoot up Pulver Rd, where I was totally exposed in the hot sun, and things started to sloooow down. Thankfully, I hit the Italy hill descent and had some fun ripping it down. At the bottom, I decided to sit in the shade for a few minutes, eat some food and access my situation. I was super low on water and still had an hour of riding or more to get back into Naples and grab some food and water. I was praying the ol rundown convenience store was open in Italy and luckily it was open. 2 cold bottles of water and a coca cola had me feeling much better. Though, nothing in the store looked appetizing and that would be a big mistake.

I climbed up Basset to Burke Hill and made my way into Hi-Tor again and was feeling a lil bit slow in the singletrack, but felt pretty good by the time I hit the DEC descent and really ripped it up. Only thing left was the 10k climb up Gannett Hill back to the car. Open road climb at the 5:15 mark in the hot sun, and feeling tired, made for an absolute death march. I wanted to see what I could give so I gassed it for the first mile and then absolutely crawled on the hot pavement up the hill. Helmet off, gloves off, jersey unzipped, and out of water by this point. I came painfully close to either collapsing from the heat and having to walk up the hill. Thankfully after 45 minutes of climbing in the baking sun, I had made it back to OCP (I usually do the climb in sub 30 on the mtb). I was super happy to dive into the showers at the campground and then head down the hill and gorge myself with some fries & mayo, chesseburger and choc milk shake! It tasted sooo very good.

Sunday, I got a far too late start. 92 degrees and I rolled out the door at 11am for 2.5 hours of tempo work. I was a little tentative as to how I was going to recover as last week, I had nothing in the tank for Sunday’s efforts. However, I hit the gas after a few minutes of warming up and was able to ride pretty easily in upper tempo fairly easily for the next 45 minutes. I actually had to keep myself from riding too hard as I felt really good. What really got the juices flowing though, was when I was soft pedaling after the tempo session on a slight descent and a tri-geek came zipping by me. Yah, can’t let that happen. I sat off his tail riding tempo for minute and then when the road turned ever so slightly upward, it was time to go in for the kill. Closed the gap, and then rolled up next to him and while he was suffering away on the uphill grind, chatted his ears off. (no he wasn’t a weekend warrior tri-guy, he was a heavy tri racer and was in the midst of going around the lake). Nothing like tr-geek hunting on the hills, they make it far too easy. Anyway’s after that it was rolling some tempo to refill the water bottles and finished the ride off with a nice 20 min sweet spot effort. I felt good and strong on sunday so was happy with that.

After sunday’s ride, took the Lakester down to the State Park and put some time in chilling in the water. Felt really good and was a nice break from the brutal heat of the weekend. I was crushed this weekend though after all the riding! Both sat and sun, I slept for 10 hours solid so hoping the recovery is good and the rain stays away for Farmall #3 tomorrow night!

Spring is in full swing here in Upstate NY. That means only one thing; time to ride the mountain bike. With that comes “Monday Mountains”, a nice chill, relaxed but fun group ride on Monday evenings that leaves the Geneva Bicycle Center at 7:15pm and heads over to the Glenwood Trails.

While Glenwood isn’t exactly the mecca of mountain biking. It serves a great purpose. There’s about 3 miles total there, but there are dozens of trails and loads of space to work on your tech skills. It’s pretty much the trails where I ‘learned’ to ride my mountain bike. Lots of super tight corners, steep ups, logs, roots, off cambers, etc., everything you need for some great skills work

With the tighter trails it’s a little easier to stay together as a group, but makes for some super fun and fast riding. Ripping trail when you inches away from the person in front of you and having to adapt to the terrain and correct on the fly is the quickest way to learn skills. We’ve termed this ‘world cupping’. Add to the fact that we usually get in some night riding, and know you have no idea what’s coming up, you’re forced to learn or slide down the ladder to the end of the group.

Over the years, the trails have slowly been formed and reshaped by the winter fall and new developments, but the enjoyment of the ride and especially the group ride never changes. I think I’ve ridden more miles on the Glenwood trails than anywhere else and I still enjoy coming back each time and the challenge the trail offer.

Farmall #2 is up tonight. I think my cold has finally released it’s nasty grip as I felt really good last night and I feel great today and ready to rip. It’s go time!