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

That made for some fun riding on the trail Saturday at Hall Ranch. I had to get out for a ride, been dying for a few weeks to test out the new Quarq quatro. Trails were dry and it was fairly warm, so a little blowing of the leaves wasn’t going to keep me at home. Though it almost put me on the ground a few times. Never did have to resort to any walking, but definitely was blown off trail more than once.

Sunday, I rolled over to Picture Rock for some more time on the dirt. Just a quick climb up to the top, around the loop and down. I’m easing back into the training with some shorter and easier rides. Plenty of time to lay down the miles soon enough.

Lots of stuff already out there on How everyone finished (2nd Place Overall-Team Omnium!)

-FasCat Blog

-303 Cycling

-Singletrack.com

CU Cycling mountain bike team kicked some ass at Nationals and I’m super proud of every single persons effort.  Whether they podium’d or not they were an integral part of the support team.  Also, all of the support crew were incredible.  Cooking dinners, maintaining bikes, helping set up and tear down the pits.  We rocked the house and Ft. Loosing is scared next year that we are coming for them and going topple their reign at the top.

I’m super excited for the Seniors (Peter/Claire) that had incredible races & pumped for all the riders that will be coming back next season!

Far and away we rock on the bike as a team, but we MOST DEFINITELY have the most fun.  When Sam was lined up for the short track and the official were counting down, it was awesome to have the whole CU team standing there shouting GO CU!! And singing the team fight song!  No one else even came close in school spirit!  You’ve seen the race pictures, here’s some fun pictures from the weekend!

Pre-riding the XC course in the snow and mud

Joey is all mud, blood and smiles on course

Sam is a bit dirty after the XC Race

Joey takes a moment to concentrate before his run

Was Successful enough for a 4th National Title in DH

I’m sure Baddick doesn’t want me to post this, those Brits are so shy, but we had fun at the costume party

Hunter S. Thompson came along with team for some reporting

You pretty much had to be there to understand this one

Raddest, fastest team around!

There’s a bunch more pictures, but they are not fit for the interwebs!!

Looking forward to returning with the team for 2012 mountain bike season and unleashing it on the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Conference & nationals again!

Side note: Training for me personally for 2012 has begun, will get a report up this weekend as I hit the trails with the new Quarq quatro and bring everyone up to speed…

The team was a force to be reckoned with during the 2011 season and I bumped into the riders at nearly every race I attended.  So it was a natural fit to ride for them (can’t beat em’ join em’).  I know I’m ready to step up my game for the 2012 racing season.  And I know the riders on the team are stoked and ready to take on an awesome schedule of races for next year.

Full details of sponsors, etc are still in the works, but I know from last year the team is awesomely supported by a huge number of companies.  As soon as the details are available, you’ll hear tons about it.

I’m super stoked to be riding with the best team in Colorado and the best amateur and pro riders around.  2012 is going to be an Epic season for sure!

Like us on facebook

Follow the team on Twitter

Uploaded with Skitch!

So decided to let things cool a bit and you can all enjoy know that my facebook photo albums are right there in my blog site.  So if you’re not on the ‘book, you can still check out everything I post… right here

Well finally bust off a big one this year, just a super fun ride up and over Rollins pass with Scott Upton.  Read about it on the mtbr boards and decided hell yes, lets go…

Rolled out at about 7 am from Eldora Ski resort and made the trek up the Jenny Creek/Guinn Mt Trail.  We rolled up and over the pass down to Fraser, rolled into Winter Park for some lunch and then rolled out of town taking the Corona Pass Road back up.  at least we thought so  Only got off track once and had to bushwhack through and find the roads!!

Rolling out from Eldora

Group ride?

The rocks on Jenny Creek

Is this the Guinn Mt Hut?

Ah nope this is the Guinn Mt. Hut

Well, if we get stuck can crash here!

First views of the high peaks

Yankee Doodle Lake

Gorgeous day and having fun

Rolling the trestles

Awesome views and sheer drops

Crossing over Rollins Pass and the Continental Divide

Rolling down to Winter Park

Climbing back out of Winter Park via the long road

I swear the road is over here

We finally found the road

Rolling back to the trestles

…And back to the trestles for more view

One last look to take it all in

This past week there was lotsa bike riding, I’ll do a another post to catch up.  Lots pictures to enjoy today

Saturday in Nederland, not quite the Nederland in Europe as Lake believes, but it does feel like a different country compared to most of the riding on the front range.  Rolled up there with Von to do some exploring and have some fun.  As usual he ripped my legs off on the climbs.  We found some new trails, did some hike a biking, got semi-lost but not really.  All together was a great day on the bike

Rolling out on the singletrack

Getting up high and enjoying the view

Gets a little narrow in here

Tipperary Creek

Sunday I decided to head back to Winter Park and re-ride last weeks King of the Rockies course.  Since I raced it with my head down and didn’t really get to look around, wanted to re scout the trails, check out the sights and see what I missed.

I had better legs than saturday, but didn’t want to overcook myself for monday’s mega so I took it pretty easy and just rolled everything and had some fun bombing the descents.  The highlight of the ride was descending off the 1st descent and overtaking a few people.  Was working on passing this young kid and before I got to let him know I was there and, he slowed dramatically and moved into my line.  Really didn’t expect that and I’m sure he didn’t expect my handlebars in his hip.  He let out one hell of a scream as we were cooking it pretty fast.  I apologized as I was trying to let him know I was there, but wasn’t much I could do.  Luckily neither one of us went down and all seemed well, so I hope he had a good ride!

Rolling over to the ‘race start’ on the roads

Rolling up theTipperary Creek climb

Still climbing up, but getting a bit easier and quicker after 20+ minutes

There was a lot of people at this spot and I stopped to find out why, wasn’t disappointed!

Rolling up the singletrack climb, peeked out to see the views

The green was so bright surrounding the singletrack.  Photo barely does it justice

Tomorrow I’ll wrap it up with the Ned>WP>Ned photos and write up!

Rolled over to Winter Park once again for the King of the Rockies XC race at Tipperary Creek. Had heard tons of good things about the race course. And could definitely tell by the number of people at the race, that the short trip there was worthwhile.  Rolled up with the Big Cat Frank himself (*the last time Frank raced mountain bikes was when I was Colorado to race the NORBA Nationals at Snowmass in 2004!) and we rode the 4-5 miles over to Fraser where the actual start line was.  Took a quick pee and tried to continue my warmup, and nearly missed my start!

Jumped on the back of the group with under 2 minutes to go.  Wasn’t really worried as there was a bit of dirt road before we would hit the first climb.  Was able to position well on the dirt road and was feeling pretty good rolling fast with the group and was where I wanted to be when the group started to get antsy rolling to the base of the Tipperary Creek climb.  The legs had a wee bit of a different tale to tell as I hit the climb, on the early slopes felt like I was going a bit backwards and started to fall through the group.  As we got up higher I started to get more into a rhythm, but it was a tad bit late as the riders whom I could have bridged across to where a bit up the trail.  As I hit the upper part of the 25 minute or so climb, speeds picked up and I caught a rider in front of me.  The climb compared quite a bit to Italy Hill, wide, flat and gently rolling to the top and the descent was nearly the same.

Unfortunately I couldn’t squeeze past the rider in front of me before the long descent down and with as loose as everything was, decided to just sit in and bite my tongue.  When we hit the road and headed into the next section of singletrack, I dispatched him and rolled forward into the super fast, super fun and swoopy trail.  I’d have to say, knowing this trail would have been a huge advantage.  No idea where I was going, but just ripping it as fast as I could and flowing at high speed and having fun on the trails.  I blew a bunch of corners here and there and got caught out in the wrong gear a few times, but all together made it out of the trail and onto the open logged climb.  I suffered a bit here and couldn’t really find a good rhythm on this climb and just worked on getting over the top and down the descent and through the feed zone.

Crossing the Creek!  Photo by MountainMoon Photography $5 downloads yeah!

I was caught shortly after the feed zone by the single speeders and then up the longer fire-road climb by another rider.  We would continue to yo-yo for the rest of the race.  He’d climb a bit faster than me and I’d bring it all back and more on the descents.  As we neared the end of the race, I knew only had a few more miles to go and attacked him up the short fire-road climb before the final singletrack section.  I had a pretty solid gap going into the woods and it slowly climbed up.  He came darn close to closing it by the time I hit the top of the climb, but as soon as I dropped the descent the gap went right back up and I was able to roll to the finish line with relative ease.  I finished 22/38 riders in the Pro Class and was relatively happy with the race, but definitely need some more work on my climbing at race speed!

Valmont XC

Sunday, decided to head over to Valmont as it was close and have some more fun on the bike and race the Boulder Mountain Bike Festival, it was a fairly small event, but new it would be fun and still brought out some super fast guys!

We had a small but elite group at the race and I had a really solid start and hung onto the tail end of the group throughout the first lap.  Bryan Alders crashed on the last corner and I snuck into 4th and he would give chase for the remaining few laps before zipping past me with a lap or so to go.  Mike West took off on the 2nd lap and I was a few seconds back off the group of 2 in front of me, when I got stung by a bee on the 2nd lap!  Hit me right in the chest and stung me in the stomach, took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on and when I finally did the riders in front where gone.  I gave chase as much as I could over the next few laps, it was brutally hot and exposed but the course was actually quite a bit of fun.

Giving Chase early on

Happy to be done in the heat

Podium time

Even the Lakester got to race!  He was super pumped and ready to go.  Got a good start and when he shifted gears, hit the afterburners and dropped everyone.  He was excited a ton, even got a post race interview…

The Kids line up and are off

Lake dropping the hammer and getting some separation

Top step of the podium

All together was an awesome weekend of bike riding and I’m looking forward to this one coming up.  Going to be some great stuff on tap, stay tuned!

Videos:

Finally got around to editing up a few videos of from When Julie K was in town… Here ya go.  Click thru to embiggen or watch in HD

Air was thin, but views were abundant

Race goal was just to get some intensity in and work on the transition into cross season.  Though, getting intensity in at 11,000ft of elevation is pretty dang easy.  I could barely breathe just warming up on the short start climb hill.  It was fun to take the chairlift all the way to the top of the mountain.  Bridget & Lake tagged along and it was Lake’s first chairlift ride.  He was quite a bit nervous and was a little scared, but ended up getting used to it.

Pro Class start

While it was an unlicensed race, I raced the ‘Pro’ class and had ok field size (bigger than some races back in NY), though the expert and below saw some really great field sizes.  Race started off with a pretty good dirt road climb to thin the field out. I was already thinned out on air and slogged off the back by a few seconds as we hit the singletrack descent.  Super fun, ripplingly fast and technical descent.  Lots of rocks to make you think about your line, but really great dirt and some fun, fast corners.  The technical descent transitioned into a super fast, fun and buff descent that was a bit more open.  Was flying down it and then dumped out onto the fire road climb.  I had managed to pass a rider on the descent and hit the climb with half the field dangling in front of me by about 30 seconds.  At this point the legs were feeling like crud as I couldn’t seem to get any oxygen to them and just decided to roll the climb at my pace (aka slow & steady endurance race pace).  After the dirt road climb, we rolled into  a good long technical singletrack climb.  Pretty rooty and some steep sections in there.  Slow and grinding away, managed to lose touch with the rider whom I passed on the descent and pretty much everyone in front of me.  Worked hard on the descent and could see him at the bottom of the climb, but just didn’t have it to catch him on the dirt road.  So laps 2 & 3 were ridden pretty much solo.  I slogged the last lap up to the climb at the top, and was pretty happy to finally cross the line.  I can definitely say that hurt and underestimated what it was gonna take, after having not raced that hard or at 11k elevation

However, the most fun was what came after the race!  Managed to drop off the mountain with Graham Alderage of Boulder Cycle Sport.  Graham is a moto rider and decided to drop the black diamond jump trail!  Full lycra, rocking the XC bikes.  Graham was catching some big air for sure and I was slowly but surely getting braver and faster as I went down.  Table topping isn’t always my thing, but I got braver and had some more fun and started to get some air for sure.  I can only imagine how insane Marky Mark Hartman would’ve gotten on those jumps as he seems to need a FAA permit for just riding in his backyard.  Mix in the jumps and some crazy huge berms and even a sweet ass raised wooden bridge on one trail and I had a giant ass grin after that.  After all that fun descending, we decided to stick around the mountain; played some putt-putt golf and even rode the alpine slide.  Lake however wasn’t very thrilled with the Alpine slide and literally took about 15 minutes to come down the hill.  Not making Bridget very happy as she was right behind him.  Me on the other hand, I almost blew off the track a few times I was ripping down that thing!

Saturday, as crappy as my legs felt I had a better day on Sunday.  Decided to ride up to Ward and put in some sweet spot effort on the climb.  Managed to do a personal best on the climb up to Ward and have some fairly good legs.  However had to dive down Super-Jamestown as it was thunder and lightning a bit up top and didn’t want to get caught in it.

Home, Home on the range.. Never seen these guys before and just around the corner

Hopefully a little rest this week and I’ll reap some benefits from this past saturdays race.  Going to head back up to Winter Park for Tipperary Creek on saturday and then hit the Valmont XC on sunday!

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…