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

Family Time

Went Hiking after Laramie up at Brainard Lake

Blown away by the amazing views

Even trekked across a Glacier in JULY!

Got some awesome family time and some tired legs!

Hit up Valmont Bike Park with Lake and Bridget

Lake working on his sand carry technique

Even Bridget isn’t scared of the bridges anymore and wants to go play there as much as she can

Went swimming in the Boulder Creek

Even took Lake to a Kids Cyclocross Clinic, where he had tons of fun and learned a bunch

Steel Wool

There has been some riding for sure!  Headed up to Nederland for the steel*wool ride this past thursday.  Pretty much the most fun ride I’ve had in Colorado ever.  Ripping fast and fun trails, the coolest peeps around, shredding gnar.  Stopping at the top of the mountain to drink beers and the view.  Ripping it down to the pizza shop to drink more beers and really dang good pizza!    True to form, I followed all the rules and even rode the bridge one handed.  Wicked fun and I’ll be back for more!

Stopping to regroup with Melissa, trust me the view up here was killer, but we were ripping past it and I was fumbling with my camera

Drinking in the views from up top

Drinking in the beers from the overlook

Trinket Tree, one must make offerings to the gods

FasCat Cyclocross Camp

It friggin rocked, J-Pows was awesome, everything about it was awesome.   You should read about how awesome it was on Velonews.  Better yet, you should come out to our camp next time.  There was so many people and everybody had fun.  I was pretty dang sore from all the running, dismount, remount, shouldering, etc on monday.  But dang am I excited to race cross this coming season

The happy campers

Bon Voyage to Julie

Managed to squeeze one last ride in with Julie over at Hall Ranch.  Just a short trip to grab some video and pics for her before she had to depart.  Was super great to get in one last ride with her before she had to head off to France.  She’s ‘super cool’ as she likes to say and I had a ton of fun riding with her.  Added bonus is she is so dang fast on the bike it was tough as hell to keep up with her.  Going to miss my training buddy, but she is off to bigger things.  Like the frigging World Championships on the road, the 2012 mountain bike Olympics and all those Euro XCO World Cups…

Soaking in the view before departing

Rolling through the wildflowers

I have some video of the ride that I need to work up and will post as soon as I can

Up next, some racing at Winter Park, catching the Tour of Colorado and prepping for cyclocross season!!  Damn this summer has been fun and it’s not over yet!

They took the term ‘Skinsuit’ in France a bit to literally (From Cyclepassion calendar)

Having fun at Hall Ranch

I hope we’ll get out for a few more rides before she departs…

Laramie Enduro

Rolled up to Laramie this past Saturday night with Scott Upton and Randy.  Got there plenty early to find a nice lil camping spot by the creek, set up shop and relax some.  Ate some food, got eaten up by mosquitos and failed miseralbly at sleeping the night before.  Not really anything new, just have learned to accomodate not being able to sleep the night before the race.

Home for the night

Gorgeous sunset over the sagebrush

Woke up and rolled over to the venue feeling good and ready to rip for the day.  Race started off with a fairly steep dirt road climb into some singletrack, I had made the front group onto the turn of hte singletrack, but immediately had to back the throttle off.  Tons of dust was kicked up in the launch off the line and I was starting to have a bit of a coughing fit.  As I soft pedalled a few mintues into the race, was getting passed left and right.  Was able to keep moving forward but mostly at a tempo pace.  I was coughing so hard a few times in that first hour that I almost blacked out from choking.  Was seriously frustrated, I used to carry an inhaler for when this would happen in the past, but it’s been so long I no longer carry it.  I basically rolled it the first hour or so, trying to get breathing and effort back under control.  Everytime I went hard I would start coughing as my breathing rate picked up.  Finally I was able to pull it together around aid station 2 or so.  I started to feel fairly ok and wasn’t coughing anywhere near as much and able to push myself forward.  I started picking riders off quickly and moving forward, no idea where I was.  Was quite a bit near the rear, but felt like I was moving up nicely.  I felt really rippingly fast on the singletrack sections, but still felt dogged on the climbs.  I just worked on flipping my mind and focusing on moving forward and getting to the end of the race.

Somewhere past aid station 3, I was told I was in 28th.  Right on the heels of the eventual female winner Gretchen Reeves.  I saw a few riders up the trail and focused on moving into the top 25, I easily picked them off on the next climb and got some distance between myself and Gretchen.  We’d been yoyoing for a bunch of the race, she would fly up the climbs and I’d bring it all back in on the singletrack.  This time though, I got some distance and kept at it.  The last 20 miles of the race was pretty heavy with singletrack and I was feeling great.  I kept my focus and kept pushing forward, I was slowly picking off riders here and there throughout the final miles.

Catching some air on the way down the HeadQuarters Trail descent (Cool photos by Action Photographic)

The final up and downs were defintiely starting to hurt, but I knew I was so close to the finish line, just needed to keep moving forward.  At the top of the final descent on the flats, made a rookie mistake.  Took a drink from my bottle and looked around at the scenery and managed to hook a tree with my bar with my hand off it.  Down goes Igby, in a cloud of dust.  Got up quickly, but was caught by the rider behind me.  He pipped me heading into the final descent.  Was able to hold his wheel without issue, but on a little rise a gap grew up and was held till we hit the dirt road that we originally climbed up for the start.  I gave it some gas and was flying down the washboarded dirt and closing the gap super quick.  Pretty sure I was doing 150 rpm as I was spun out just trying to close the gap as the meters to the finish line ticked off.  As we hit the corner to the line with a few hundred to go, I launched an all out sprint, closed the gap, but simply ran out of room.  Both of us in our haste almost took out the poor girls trying to take our number.  Ended up losing by half a bike length.  Ah well, I definitely finished the race strong.

After a crappy start and continuing to move forward through the end, I was pumped to have finished 15th.  I know I can do alot better than that, so the chances are pretty solid that I’ll be back next season to make some improvments on my time/finish from this year.

It’s wednesday and I’m still hacking my lungs up and waking the wife up at night with coughing attacks.  I’m either going to fix it tonight or be in far worse shape tonight after the short track!  Ah well, will have some fun…

Rolled into town in time to grab my packet and get a hotel room right across the street from the start.  The race course started right at Howleson hill, which was literally 2 blocks from downtown.  Super cool and had a great vibe for an early am start.  The course rolled right out of the gate and went uphill. I made it to the front group on the little pavement section to widen out, but then it went straight up the mountain on a loose rocky climb and I picked a bad line and fell in line with the group.  We then tucked into a few bits of singletrack and got held up behind a rider as he dabbed uphill. Things then spread into a long 2-3km doubletrack climb and I wasn’t really ripping it up the climb but was holding my own ok.  Dropped through the first of many meadows filled with wildflowers and then switchbacked its way up a long tortureous climb through the aspens/wildflowers.  You would duck into the woods and then float out through the all flowers, then back into the woods, back into the flowers.  Was kinda surreal but was also super cool.  Made the time pass easily I suffered and slogged to the top.  When I finally hit the top and the feedzone was happy to rip it down the descent.  Only problem was, we were bunched up and the guys in front weren’t very fast.  The guy behind me was yelling at me for a pass, but I was gapping him in easy sections, some griping about how he was a local, etc.  But I managed to get past the few riders and have a clear path to the bottom and ripped it solo.  What was that guy screaming about being a local and knowing the trail?  Well he shoulda practiced going down it some more as I had at leat 2 minutes on the group by the bottme!  The descent itself was awesome, just super long and super flowy and fast, lots of corners but super tachy dirt.  Crazy tall wildflowers though made it tough to see any lines and look farther than what was right in front of you.  Had to be a bit of a Jedi and anticipate what was coming up based on the flow of the terrain.  It was like descending blindfolded in a few spots.

(photo from Singletrack.com)

We kicked out onto a fire road at the bottom of the descent.  Even though I just ripped the descent my legs weren’t ready to go hard with the group in front of me so I sat up and rolled up to the next climb.  A super long singletrack climb, pockmarked by hoof prints, enough so that on the 2nd lap I opened my pro pedal valve up to get some more cush!  Felt ok going up this climb, I had to pee so bad on the first lap that I stopped and took some time.  Got passed by a few riders, but brought them back as I liked the flow of the climb.  Mostly wooded, but would have a few breaks and small descents  carrying speed into these steep uphill sections and could just sprint over the top.  Once you hit the top of the climb, the view was just epic.  I literally stopped pedalling and just was awesomely wowed by the mountains and the area.  Was amazing, reality set in when Katie Compton came ripping by at the top.  In hindsight should’ve stuck in front on the descent as we got in a small group of 4 and no one was going forward.  Would’ve been nice to have hit it alone.  Though the 2nd descent to the finish line, made the first one look sad in comparison.  Huge wildflowers lined the trail all the way down and tons of curves and berms and jumps and just FLOW, more FLOW and your cup runneth over with FLOW.  Barely needed the brakes other than when an unexpected corner came up that you couldn’t see with the height of the wildflowers.  Lots more Jedi descending tricks were utilized to make it down this descent.

Came through in our small group to the finish and went to grab drinks and food out of my cooler.  But some jackass had moved it!  Seriously who moves someones cooler when its just leaning agains the fence?  Rummaged around and finally found it and threw it back into place.  Some lady said she’d move it back (I presumed she was the one who moved it in the first place) and I told here I had riders on course that may need it.  I wasn’t lying as Anna was behind me and there was a spare tube/co2 and some food for her just in case she would need anything.

Second lap was a bit more of the same, except I was mostly alone.  I payed my toll for the heat at the top of the climbs and the legs finally showed some semblance of effort 4.5 hours into the race midway up the 2nd climb.  Ugh, was just a little too tired coming into the race as my heart rate would never creep past 150.  I ended up finishing 30th, not shabby but not like I know I can perform.  Such is racing.  Sometimes up, sometimes down

Ah well that’s racing.  The upside is, this was without a doubt one of the coolest race courses I’ve ever ridden.  My words suck in comparison to how the support, volunteers and the course itself really was.  There was so much FLOW on this course and so much fun.  Wildflowers, Aspens, MEGA climbs, MEGA descents, just awesomenesss all together.  I’ll definitely be back for this one!

On the way back home, I just lollygaged and took some photots and had some fun.

Looking down on the Valley after rolling out of town

Rabbit Ears Pass

North Park

More Mountains

Moose!!

Big honking moose

Pretty certain the moose congregate here so they can people watch

Off this afternoon to Laramie, Wyoming for the Laramie Enduro.  Hoping for much better legs and some fun this weekend!

Made it to and back home from Upstate New York and had an awesome time

Met My Niece/God-daughter Reagan

Hung with my favorite Buddy Peyton

Raced my bike Tuesday night at the Park Ave Arrowhead race; the whole family came out and I walked away with the W.  Thick air felt good, slip sliding around on the muddy trails with no rear brakes did not, but happy to have a good race.

Rolled out with the GBC crew for a Naples SoGnar Ride

Yup I remember these muddy, wet, rocky, steep (3 garmins confirmed 51% grades) super fun trails

Went out on the boat on Seneca Lake

Played some more with Peyton in the Pool (yeah yeah I know take the t-shirt off!)

More to come later…. Including a full write-up on the race and what it’s like to go back to wet muddy trails.

We did have some fun though and got in another great day of riding

Anna Climbs up to the top right out of the parking lot

Suzanne hits the lines on the Gunny Loop

Big Rocks, Big Views

Gorgeous Day & Awesome Views

Day 4

Headed back to hit a few trails we missed on 18mi rd.  Ended up Hitting Prime Cut, Chutes & Ladders & Kessel’s Run

Here’s a quick video (uncut & not edited from Kessel’s Run)

Only pic I got of the day

I’ve got tons of video, just haven’t imported it all and processed it yet.  Been super busy, why do you think been so behind on these!

Day 1: Edge Loop

Apparently we rode this completely ass-backwards but still managed to have hella fun!

The Gang is ready to Roll Out! (From Left to Right; Anna Fortner, Ray Fortner, Brad Shields,

Mark Hartman, Suzanne Hartman, Jason Hilimire)

We’re heading up there!

Rolling through the creekbed

Hey Guys, the trail ends here!  I wonder what those ropes are for?

Ahh now I see how to get up there

After the rope climb was a brutal singletrack climb, just went up forever

But it led us to some spectacular views on top!

And then onto the hike-a-bikes

… And more hike-a-bikes…

But Suzanne was smiling up top!

We ripped it down the dirt road and then jumped onto Zippety-do-da and just blasted the super fun trail.  Awesome wrap to day 1

Day 2: Kokopelli Trails

Not quite as warm but gorgeous scenery

What’s over this edge?

Some awesome and buff trails to really rip on

Don’t look left!

Big chunky rocks on the Lions Loop

Father-Daughter Bonding time!

Suzanne the Shredder on the ridge

Now that we are up here we get to go back down there to those trails!!

I’ll catch up with Days 3 & 4 tomorrow for sure…

Off went the email with a giddy and thoughts of watching Mark’s rear tires barely touch the ground on descents.  Few days later, got the reply “Tempting…very tempting. Give us a few days to think about it.  – Mark”

Damn, didn’t sell em hard enough.  Then the very next day inbox read “We’re in…although Jim may lose a bit more hair while we are gone! Thinking the 24 – 2nd. We’ll let you know after we work out airfare, fly into Denver right? We are stoked.”

That was the kicker, “stoked” I knew it then that they were gonna be here for sure and have a blast.  They arrived Sunday, which put me in a bind to kick Brendan out for a day, but he was cool with it and stayed with the Dino.

As soon as they got here, we built the bikes and headed over to Hall Ranch

Hall Ranch climbing up the rock garden

Didn’t have the best conditions to ride in as it was a little drizzly and we even got snow up on the Nelson loop, but the smiles were there and of course Mark jumped off of nearly everything sight unseen.

The very next day we headed over to Devils Backbone for an early am rip.  Temps were a bit warmer, trails were tacky and rideable all around.  It was time for some more fun.

Mark Climbing up the Ridge

Mark showing us how it’s done!

Suzanne rolls over the chunky rocks

Rolling thru the Valley near Indian Summer

I don’t have any photo’s of it, but we were gonna shortcut back and ride Blue Sky instead of looping Indian summer again.  Literally 10ft into the dirt road, we were 6 inches deep in super peanut butter mud.  My bike stopped completely and as I picked up the now 60lb machine, my feet decided to pick up the mud.  In the matter of a few steps I was now wearing snowshoes as the mud just stuck to everything and kept building.  None of us saw this coming, got off the road quickly and spent the next 30 minutes scraping mud off.  Some good laughs and back onto the eerily dry trails… And ripped off the rest of the ride.

Day 3, I had to work so I sent Mark and Suzanne off on the Heil/Hall Double.  They loved Picture Rock!  They even got snowed on!  But came back happy as clams.

The next am took them back to Heil so we could ride to the lookout (they had my Garmin file and I didn’t go near there).  Perfect morning for a ride and the trails were fast!

As Usual followed this guy around

Rolling thru the pines

Made it to the lookout for a group photo

Mark riding the skinny

They got a good taste of all the trails around Boulder/Lyons and were super ‘stoked’ to say the least bit.  After the rides we packed up our stuff and headed to Fruita!!  To be continued….

I had wrapped up the Pueblo XC and the big man, Brendan Housler was making his way to Boulder (his report here) to test his 3rd place at Battenkill Pro/1 legs at altitude.  Can his jet engine fire at 5500ft?

He did some mega miles and fared pretty well and was happy to have him come out here and ride for a bit. Even if the dogs ate his bread, I think he still had a great time.  And I certainly hope he comes back, he’s gonna be off to good things these next few seasons.

Climbing up Sunshine Canyon

Jet engines firing up 4 mile canyon

Voodoo Fire RME 70 miler

Headed back down to Pueblo for my first endurance race of the season.  Keep testing the legs and having fun.  A quick change of the course had us doing 3 x 23 mile laps instead of 2 x 35 miles.  No worries, means easier access to the on course feed zones.  Having ridden the trails the weekend before, I knew exactly what I was up against (and this time I would have the corners down).  I hit the start with the front group and just slowly went backwards over the course of the first 2 laps.  It was cold and chilly and my legs weren’t that bad, I just couldn’t ride fast.  Scratching my head, I was on the right lines, just couldn’t keep it up.  I faded a bit on the second lap and almost considered quitting the race.

Decided to just stick out the 3rd lap and have some fun and get in some good training.  Few minutes into the start of the 3rd lap, my rear tire was a little low.  Stopped to put some co2 in it.  As I was spinning the wheel to get to the valve stem, realized the wheel barely turned.  Try again, nope few inches.  Well, that’s what was slowing me down!!  Frigging disc brake was rubbing solid.  Quick fix of that and the wheel spun freely.  I ripped it apart on that final 18 miles.  Was rolling past tons of zombies on the trail who were a bit tired from the days efforts.  Felt like I was flying, guess that I was as I took 10 minutes off of my lap times….

Nothing I could do except laugh and keep on riding.  It was good to just be out there and race.  I managed 16th in my age, 33? Overall.  Not overly disappointed, but I know I can do quite a bit better.  On to the next one I guess

Up next will be the first few days riding with the GBO gang before Fruita MTB Camp (i think they changed their name from GBC at least that’s what the logo looks like

We ended up driving through Big Thompson Canyon into Estes Park.  Along the way we stopped for some lunch along the river.  Decided it would be fun as hell to play in the stream, throw some rocks, climb on the Boulders and basically just be 6 year old boys.  It was a blast and we both had tons of fun.

Immediately as we rolled into Estes Park, there was a whole herd of Elk that crossed the road.  So it was super cool to see!

Once we got inside the Park, both of us were really awed by the vistas and the surrounding landscape.  I think Lake wanted to play on the rocks a bit more.  Don’t tell mom, but a few feet back is a big drop off!

My favorite picture from the day.  We played on this rock for a long time.  Even got to pretend it was the surface of the moon and bounce around and jump on it like were astronauts.

At the day’s end we went to the museum where Lake earned his Junior Ranger badge.  He was pretty dang excited for this and I was super proud of him for earning it and answering the Rangers questions.  I think now we have to go to a few more parks for him to earn more.

Nothing is better than hearing him say “Best Day Ever” when we got home.  Full pics here on facebook .  All in All, super fun day and glad that got to spend the day with Lake!

Saturday-FoCo Fun

Managed to get out Saturday with Sonya and Jeff of Team Green (Ergon)  Go there, they have some cool pictures too!.  They are both prepping for the Julian Death March next weekend in Cali and needed a good ride with some climbing.  Temps were up near 80 for the day and I made a mistake opting for just bottles.  I really loathe carrying a pack, especially when wanting to ride at a solid clip.  The Superfly only has 1 bottle mount and I guess I just need to suck it up and carry it.  It ended up costing me big time.  I played it conservative with the water bottles as I wasn’t totally sure where/when we would get water and by the time I needed it, I had barely drank half a bottle 2 hours into the ride and was already in the whole.  We scored some before the climb up Horsetooth, but damage was done.  I started to cramp a little bit coming up the long climb, hamstrings were just not happy at that point.

Rolling out along HorseTooth Reservoir

Climbing up the big Climb to the Towers

I’m on top of the World!!

Trails were in Primo conditions

We came off the Towers climb on a pretty crazy fast wide-open descent (was really fun and felt like descending the ol Bristol Mt. Ski Slopes).  Grabbed some more water and headed over to Blue Sky/Indian Summer.  Climbing up Indian summer was total suckage for me.  Legs had no go and just had to back off a bit and let the 2 go in hopes I’d have some thing to finish the ride off with.  Started to come around a bit rolling back home on Blue Sky and back out, but there wasn’t any need to go after that.  All together though was a great day of riding and had some awesome fun with the Green Gang and got to ride some new trails that haven’t ridden before.

Don’t want to sound like a downer on the ride, cause it was hellacious fun and we ripped the trails.  Had some good times and now I’m looking forward to pinning on my first number plate this coming weekend at the first Mountain States Cup of the season down in Colorado Springs at the Cheyenne Mt. Explosion.  Will be a good chance to get some high intensity work and just toe the line after a long off-season.  Still have tons of fitness to build and looking forward to a long race season!

Lesson learned this weekend though, in that heat and dryness need to drink alot more!  I slammed 2 x 32 oz of Cola on the way home and grabbed a full meal and was still 4 lbs under my morning starting weight!  Ouch, I know better than to do that for sure