JasonHilimire.com

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!!

Ok, os I finally figured out how to create slideshows from flickr. Since I wasted so much time on it, I’ll just dump it in here and go forward.

This past wednesday night was rad as usual. Headed down to Naples with Chad & Hanggi for some climbing. The legs were still feeling the effect of the cross race, but all was good. I even felt really good rocking the 2×9 on the climbs. We hit up Parish, Woolen and the uber-steep Wolfganger climb and never had any issues with the 26×34. Actually felt really good pushing the gearing on the climbing. It was a tough ride 25 miles with 32000 ft of climbing packed into 2 hours.

This weekend should be a good time. Moonlight ride saturday evening and then hitting up the Parma Cross race on sunday. We’ll see how the 1×10 works there and hopefully not too whacked from all the riding I’ll do tomorrow.

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!

Last Night was Farmall Hill Challenge #2. I’d missed the first week as I was traveling. I had some heavy motivation to get out there and shred the trails. I’ve not raced in a bit and I’m in full on prep mode for the Shenandoah 100. Here in Seneca Falls, we’ve had massive thunderstorms early this week, but didn’t seem to happen over in Rochester. Course was in Primo shape, and there was a new re-route section that added about 10 seconds per lap.

I felt really good warming up, I was slightly concerned as I had to buy some new shoes, which meant new cleats also and I’d come unclipped on one of the descents and almost ended badly. My sidi’s blew-out and apparently all 4500 pairs that were being imported were stolen of the docks. I ended up with a pair of Louis Garneau Montana XT’s, quite comfy (I don’t like carbon soled shoes), but much wider shoe (and a much grippier sole). Will probably rock them until I can get a pair of Sidi’s. Also new was a pair of Bontrager XR1 Team Issue tires. I wanted to see how they would hold up in race conditions as they rocked out over the weekend (see link for my post on their performance ).

Race went on as planned, got to the front off the start, established my gap on the first 2 laps and then slowly slipped away continuing to build up my lead. Felt good and I turned about a sub 1:05 total time (link has my time listed wrong as of now). Pretty solid and def the fastest I’ve turned on that course and I think I would have been sub 1:04 and on the old course before the re-route. So things are lining up good for the SM 100!

In other news, this weekend was a boatload of riding. Put in some big miles on the Superfly down in Naples doing some prep work and getting in loads of climbing. Sunday was nothing more than a death slog in the rain as I was hosed from Saturday.

Starting it off on Parish Hill

Headed down with Hanggi for some Dawn Patrol. Climbed up Parish Hill, descended Wood Hill then back up Bassett and into Hi-Tor and down the DEC descent. Here’s the video below

DEC Descent Naples, NY 8-8-09 from Jason Hilimire on Vimeo.

After dispatching Hanggi, I hit up Wolfganger and down Sunnyside, over to Griesa and up into OCP for a loop on the Hardcore course, descended down the Orange Trail and up and into Cutler for some more singletrack shredding. Took the old road down into Naples, then climbed up East hill, descended Basset Rd, climbed up Wood Hill and back through Hi-Tor and the DEC descent to finish things off. I didn’t have my power-tap on for the day, but somewhere around 70 ish miles in 5:45-6 hours of riding with 7 major climbs! I was whooped and def payed for it on Sunday as I could barely turn the pedals!

The man with the magic fingers, Mark Hartman, rebuilt my powertap hub up to a new set of Stan’s 355’s. So looking forward to a repeat of this past weekend’s workout again, but his time with some power numbers to chase around on the climbs!

This lil’ guy below has been putting in more miles than I have. He tells me his bike coach make him do all this training. When Bridget asked him who his bike coach was, he couldn’t tell her because Lake and I are supposedly in ‘competition’. Frank, did you pick him up without me knowing?

He has me yell “Lake is the winner” every few times he rides up and down the sidewalk. Cracks me up, also when he says, “I’m dancing on the pedals” and proceeds to stand up and pedal…somebody watched waay too much Tour de France this July.

(I posted this to the 29er crew site also…)

This past weekend was The Hardcore 24. One of my favorite events and which I’ve done very well at in the past few years (a 2nd and 2 Solo overall victories). Thus this time around I was out to defend my title and have some fun!

The course was relocated to a new venue, a shorter distance, but more technically demanding course on fairly new trails greeted the 20+ solo riders and the rest of the racers. Course was in primo shape bone dry and fast. I had put plenty of laps in during the prior months and even put in a few more the week leading up to the race.

All systems go, taper in full effect. Legs are ready, not much to do but pedal the superfly for the next 24 hours.

1st lap started with a prime of $100 for the fastest lap. I got kinda throttled in the singletrack of the start as I did no warm-up prior and the legs weren’t ready for the sprint at the start. But I was in the woods in about 6th place overall. I felt great and was flying and passed a few other riders and moved up into 3rd. I could see 1st and 2nd battling it out around the multiple corners. Got a few time checks that I was around 30 secs off the back. I knew it was going to take a monster effort to pull it back in such a short course and I decided to sit back and prep for the next 24 hours of racing. I ended up with the fastest solo lap and was 3rd across the line turning a 40 minute ish lap (32 sec down on 1st).

Felt really great on the 2nd lap settling in and turned a 43 minute lap and was feeling great.

I’d known storms were potentially coming our way, but had no idea what was coming our way. The rain, thunder, lighting and wind hit the course over the next 2-3 laps. It downpoured heavily and made the course just a muddy mess with the newer trails. Things were still rideable and fairly fast. Lap times slowed down a bit, but I had but some serious distance between myself and the other solo riders.

The rain finally stopped, but it left an extremely difficult course, thick mud and very greasy and tricky in the corners. I’d lost my granny ring due to the heavy mud, and was know walking the steeper climbs in order to conserve as much energy as possible. It became heavily draining, slowly grinding away in the mud (lots of the course was very slow speed uphill singletrack). I had a well established lead over the other riders and finally took a break to change after 8 laps.

Things were starting to dry out and firm up. Upon arising after sitting and eating some food, I stood up and my right knee popped hard. I let out a quick yelp, but didn’t think much of it. Not sure what I did, but I paid for it. During the next lap I could barely push the pedals as my right knee was aching terribly. Once I finished the lap, I came into the pits and iced it for a good 20 minutes, got some ibu and decided to test it. At this point it had swollen up a bit and I rode the first section of the course and decided my best bet was to pull the plug.

I was still in the lead which made it quite a downer, but there is a long season ahead! In the end I still managed to finish 3rd overall!! Many of the solo riders opted to sit out in the rain and wait till the course dried while I plugged away, so still pumped about that finish!

Firstly, nevermind all the bike riding and whatnot, my nephew turned 1 year old this past week and Sunday was his birthday party!! So Happy Birthday to my lil bubber Peyton Thomas!!

onto the bike riding

Not much to say about the weekend, did a big solo 6 hour ride on Sunday down in Naples, hitting up as much of the Highlander route as possible and burning out a few ultra steep climbs and suffering in the sun. A perfect day of riding and the last big push prior to the hardcore 24.

Fitness is super high and now it’s time for my taper!

Enjoy the Pics!

I love riding here for the views

That’d be a house for boats and not people

Wine & Water

This little guy was overly curious

Old & New on Strong Hill

Windmill Farm in Naples

Big wedding here the next few days so I’ll be offline (but grab me on twitter)

You can follow me on twitter @jasonhilimire, I update and post quite a bit there.

The title refers to a term in the software business, where after a bit of programming, bug fixes and tweaks, said software has the potential to be the final version unless major bugs are found.

Feels to me like the last few weeks have been spent working the bugs out of my system (hopefully). Because today, I felt like gold. Finally, feels like I’ve shaken whatever bad luck I’ve had and got me some good legs.

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My planned route was cut short by a smidge as I decided to hang around the house this morning and have breakfast with Lake and Bridget rather than rushing out the door to fit the ride in. Gave me a chance to spend some extra time with them before I’d be gone the next 6+ hours.

I started from the Geneva Bicycle Center and made my way south into Penn Yan, rolling along the ridge line enjoying some nice lake side views and having some great sensations in the legs. I made good time and made the turn west towards Naples and the southern end of Canadaigua Lake.

Decided to climb up Underwood Hill, only ever been up it on a mountain bike and I can remember grinding up a paved road in my granny gear. Today, though the 39×25 was tolerable even on the ultra-steep grade up the hill. It did seem like the hill went on forever. I was rewarded with a nice descent down South Hill road, and surprised to find that in the super steep part, it was actually paved!!

After that I rolled into Naples and decided to climb up and over Griesa Hill. It’s a really cool climb. great views of the valley, and some crazy cool old barns that date back a long time. Kinda euro-esque I’d say. Someday I’ll roll up the hill and just get some good pics of the barns!

After a quick refuel and water top off it was time to head up Gannet Hill. 10k of climbing at about 5% avg grade. I was nicely rewarded with a few tri-geeks to gobble up on the climb. They had about a 1k start on me and I quickly dispatched them en route to the top (they’ll never climb to the top cause, a: they can’t climb and b: the descent off is far too steep for their bikes with the aero position).

After that it was time to roll along the Canadaigua Lake front and enjoy the multi-million dollar homes. Some crazy sick houses along the route, can’t imagine what some of them spend just on groundskeeping!!

All in all ended the day nicely: 93.7 miles 5.7 hours, 366 TSS, 4,027 kilojoules.

Tomorrow, will break the century barrier as I’ll be heading around another one of the Finger Lakes with Mark and Suzanne Hartman. Maybe the legs will be ready and I can send the “gold master” to production just in time for the Lumberjack 100!