JasonHilimire.com

Things have really started to mesh well the last few weeks. Been getting some good ride time in on the bike & all the snow is starting to melt. The sun is even shining!

Few days last week I managed some early morning road rides along the lakefront. Something quite serene & peaceful about it. Everything is still & it’s nice to have the solitude. Unfortunately so early in the am causes some unawakened legs also, but just takes some getting used to.

This weekend was great. The sun was out & got to race my bike on Saturday & get in a good ride again on Sunday. More importantly spent loads of time with Lake! Bridget is in NYC for a few days so we’ve been hanging out. Went for a bike ride, played some snow soccer & played some indoor hockey (don’t tell Bridget!) & all the fun stuff that little dudes do. He’s way too much fun, gotta keep it coming in doses though!

Thus week should be another killer week. Fitness is rapidly climbing & another giro again this weekend. Might skip Sunday & go climbing the hills of Naples for a big ride. Gonna be gorgeous! Maybe I’ll even get some pics up on thus thing & blog more than once a month!

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!!

It’s ok really, I’m still alive. My off season has come and gone. You can call off the search & rescue crew, I’m finally making a blog post. I’ve even ridden my bike a few times…

So I took a few weeks off the bike, drank some beers, hung out with the family. Played alot of video games. Lot’s of Modern Warfare 2 and I still suck online. The only thing I could kill was the people in the airport as they were unarmed…

I’ve finally swung myself back into training mode. Been getting myself motivated enough to get into the gym for every workout. Though I swapped with Bridget and started going in the mornings. Let me tell you, getting up at 5 am really sucks. I’d much rather lift at midnight than that early. There really isn’t any amount of coffee that will awaken me enough. Though, I gotta do what I gotta do otherwise she’ll wear the dreaded sweatpants. If you’re a guy, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re a girl, why?

Seriously, can feel the raw power in the legs coming. Just wait till next week when I’ll try to get my scrawny ass to lift more than just the bar. My legs are gonna be HUGE!

I even actually dragged my ass out of bed at 4:30 am this morning in the midst of major snowstorm, and drove to the trails to ride. Mark & Suzanne couldn’t make it out due to the weather, and they had Burt’s bike. I made a unfruitful attempt to ride in the deep snow and decided to turn arond and go back to bed. Ah well, chamois time is training time right?

Maybe I’ll get some miles in this weekend on the roadie, I even bought me a new sweet blue race lite front wheel for her and everything. I don’t have to steal the one of my cross bike anymore!

Maybe next post I won’t wait an entire month!

Alright, so it’s been a bit of a while coming, what can I say, the off season is busy. You have lots of things to do, sit on your ass, eat greasy food, play xbox and drink beer. That’s a lotta stuff to fit into a small window of the season.

Recap: Day 2 Day 1

Day 3

Day 3 looks on paper, to be a super fun, super fast and easy day.

Little did I know what I had in store for me. Since the day was a bit faster, we got some bonus added sleep time as the race started an hour later than normal, though for this race we started in the center of the village. It was quite cool and loads of people gathered round to see us off

We were mostly smiling cause we thought today was all downhill, little did we realize what was on tap!

It was a quick start rolling right through the city village and then up the first of the day’s climbs. Again, I was feeling really good on the bike and happy to be out and ready for another day’s adventure.

The first climb took us up and up and up. At the top was a nice little gathering of the locals, cheering us on pushing us forward. I had slacked off a bit to take pictures and had to rally myself to bridge the gap up to Todd. Once I caught Todd on the road, I rallied him to grab my wheel and we bridged up to the Green Machine for a really fun singletrack descent through some flower fields, mint and other spices. It really smelled amazing (no pics it was too much fun!)

After we hit the days first descent we had another bit of climbing before we would come to the top and descend through some crazy farmland. Riding on a combination of farm roads and worker trails, we cut our way though the fields. Working right into this crazy mud chute, it had to be about 12-15 high and just wide enough for us. Only thing was it was so steep and muddy, I was having a hell of a time clipping in and managing to hold onto the bike as it slid down. There was no control, just riding a bucking bronco and bouncing off the sides for 200 meters.

Once we got out of the chute it was onto the road for one of the hairest road descents I’ve ever been on. The picture above really doesn’t do it any justice. This thing was steep, it made Bopple hill look flat. Swapping between cobbles and concrete, super windy and just blazingly fast. All the while the townsfolk & their dogs are dodging around us.

All the commotion wasn’t good. When I hit a flat spot I decided to wait up for Todd. After a few minutes, I figured he had a flat or something. Then a few riders came down and told me he had crashed. I made my way back up the hill to find him sitting on the fence, with just about every kid in town checking him out. He was in some good pain, had gone down at around 50-60kph on the cobbles, when a dog cut between us. Luckily his pack took the brunt of the blow and the rest was mostly just some deepish cuts, road rash and some muscle bruising. Silly roadies, at least being a roadie Todd was used to crashing at speed. After resting for a bit, we decided to coast the final few kilometers to the next checkpoint and have him taken back to the hotel so the doc could check his wounds and get him cleaned up. After triple checking he was ok and once we got to the checkpoint, we decided that I would go on solo.

Riding solo in an unknown country, and being pretty much at the rear of the field and not seeing anyone for a while was kind of scary and fun at the same time. After I left Todd, I had a hell of a road descent before I dived into the Jungle. I was speeding past the cars at 80-100kph and having all kinds of fun! Once I hit the jungle it was all downhill, fast and flowy farm roads. Just crusing on the bike.

Then came the cobbles, and the cobbles, and the cobbles and the friggin cobbles. 20 straight kilometers of descending cobbles at high speeds. I had to stop and make some fork adjustments cause my hands were going numb even with the fork taking off the edge. It was fun, but quite hairy in the corners as the rocks had a slight slickness to them. I knew if I went down, there was no one to pick me back up.

We descended down and down through the Macadamia Nut fields

The cobbles continued and continued, and finally ceased. From there it was some crazy fast and fun singletrack. It flowed so very nicely, only thing was it was sooo insanely humid and hot. I felt like my face was going to melt right off. Then I realized I’d not seen any tire tracks or arrows in a few kilometers. I got spooked quick. The realization that I was all alone, lost and in a jungle caused a panic. I mean I’m in a friggin jungle, I could get eaten by a goddam jaguar or something. I decided to turn around and make my way back to where I could find the last arrow. I seemingly wasn’t the only one who missed an arrow as my solo trek soon turned into a gang of 9 riders looking for the course. I had gone quite a way (about 4-5k) and managed to pick up a few stragglers. Luckily was able to get myself back on course and get moving forward.

As I got moving forward, I came to the 2nd suspension bridge of the day. Holy crap, this thing was all rickety, off kilter, about 200 meters long and about 50 meters in the air. It took me a good damn bit of time to cross the thing.

You can see here, I had to actually stop and move my bike to the other side of me. The bridge was swaying hard and really was leaning off to one side and I had to switch sides to feel comfortable. Once I was off the bridge, and now out of water it was one hell of a hike-a-bike out. I had no idea how far I had left go as I lost my computer. If felt like I was going to melt. I contemplated just sitting down and letting that jaguar eat me. Then I heard a few voices, and a few locals were on the climb observing us racers coming over the bridge and they had clean water!! Hallelujah!! I downed about 5 of those little sealed baggies of water (I’ve never seen water come in baggies). Got complety rejuvenated and was super pumped to find out that at the top of the climb, I had a few k of mostly road riding to get to the finish.

I railed it hard to the finish and was super pumped to get there! It had been a long 3 days and know it was to come to a close!! Todd was there waiting, he had been cleaned up and bandaged and managed to limp over and give me a hi-five for finishing. The race, the hotels, the course, the people, the food, the staff, everything about this race was 5 star across the board. I highly recommend it to anyone. Next year I’ll be on my honeymoon as this race kicks off, so until 2012 there’s an open spot, but I hope
to be back in the future!

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!

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!!

If you’re looking for my write-up on yesterdays Buck Hill Cyclocross race, it’s over on the 29erCrew.com website

Yeah, yeah, you want to see all the cool photos of bike stuff from interbike. Well I’ll try to get those uploaded tonight. In the meantime here’s some quick video clips of cross vegas. Had a great time watching the race and hanging out. The part that sucked though was the 90 minute wait for the bus afterwards!

Video clips I took from Cross Vegas

More stuff to come later, I’m still decompressing from it all and tired from the cross race yesterday.

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!!