I’ve downhilled a few times & classic skied tons, but never have I ever skate skied.  Met the crew at the gate for my first foray.  AP, MT, Tupa, Bob & Josh were there to ‘help’ me learn.  They showed me a few things and then just went really really fast and I was forced to bust my ass with everything I had to keep up.

This is what I felt like out there skiing

I could go fine on the flats, better than I though on the down and totally sucked going uphill.  And there was lots and lots of uphill.  I can’t remember the last time I went that hard.  Legs were burning, arms were burning, it was dark, 9000ft elevation and I simply fell over a few times going uphill as I was just going so hard trying to keep up.

I’m pretty certain this is what my technique looked like to everyone else

Needless to say it was both the most fun and hardest thing I’ve ever done exercise wise.  HUGE thanks to Powers for lending me the skate skis and boots.  I’m super hooked on the sport and I need to get up to Ned and get a good lesson from the Brit.

Well the snow came down in bunches Thursday/Friday night and made for a good fun day this past Saturday.  I elected for my first Winter Triathlon.

Rolled out to North Boulder Park for some am skate skiing

Then jumped on the trainer for 90 minutes of Sufferfest videos with Bill & Kelly

Then home for 90 minutes of Snowshoe time with Bridget & Lake

I was pretty crushed when I finished up all 3 workouts, but damn it was a ton of fun.

I didn’t get to bust out the skis on Sunday, but instead took Bridget and Lake and the pups for some more snowshoeing up in Nederland

This tells you how deep the snow is when Lizzy was swimming in it

It was a gorgeous day out there and far warmer than you can imagine

And of course the dogs had so much fun!

Training is rolling along nicely and I’ll work on bringing everyone up to speed quite a bit more on this blog and getting some more updates up much much quicker than I have been in the past few months.  New Bikes are coming and racing is less than 2 weeks away!!

Jumped on the rollers here at FasCat for some Over-Under work.  Essentially 30 seconds at low anaerobic work to create some suffering, fill up that cup full of pain and then 8 minutes at 95% of threshold.  Working right at that point where the body is almost having trouble clearing lactate, then hitting it hard again the final 30 seconds.

Enough indoor stuff though, the 5 day forecast is looking awesome!!

Here’s to getting the mountain bike out this weekend for some more shredding!

Saturday morning though, I had to get the indoor cycling class out of the way.  We did the “Angels” video from sufferfest.  Sufferfest is aptly titled, that hurt.  It hurt alot, but in a good way.  Pretty sure the heart rate hasn’t gone that high in a while.

After that headed over to Hall Ranch to test the trails and see how things were.  Needless to say, the legs were a little soft.  Trails were in pretty good shape, though the Nelson loop had some deep snow on the trail in a few spots, but otherwise a good fun ride.

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Seriously, does it get better than this in January?  Decided to head back there today.  Legs felt soo much better.  Must’ve been the sufferfest, helped the legs out.  I floated up the opening climb.  I still can’t get the whole thing at Hall Ranch.  1 friggin dab on the Keyhole section every single time!  I’m gonna get it one of these days for sure!  After that did 2 laps on the Nelson Loop and the snow was nicely packed in the deep spots.  But still, nothing like full on high speed descending at 25 mph and ripping it over a water bar, landing in some deep snow and just letting the bike ‘float’ in the snow.  Was having so much fun descending I re-rode the Bitterbrush trail just so I could do the descent all over again.

Nothing like really feeling in the flow on the trails.  Hall Ranch is good fun and is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to ride.  Weather is looking really good again this week, Heil Ranch and Picture Rock will likely dry out nicely.  I’ll certainly be looking forward to some more time on the bike this week.

Oh yeah, the Bears lost.  Ah well, looks like someone better send Jay Cutler a few mental training books…

With the chance to hit some trails and have some fun and the nice weather, August/September is some of the best time to ride in Naples. I headed down this past Thursday night, but forgot my lights, DOH! Managed to rip up Parish Hill, rip through Hi-Tor and down the DEC in about 50 minutes, plenty of daylight. But not enough to do it all again. So I did some hill repeats on Parish Hill in the dark. Want to really sharpen your skills? Descend a dirt road at 35mph in the pitch black, that will give you some confidence

This past Saturday, headed back down to get what I was really looking for. A good 4 hour tear with some good climbing. Felt great to rip the trails and have some fun

All in all was a great day of riding. Going to head back out there tonight (with my lights and get some more ripping in! Then this weekend, gonna take the Lake monster down to Windham to see the World Cup Finals!! First time World Cup in the US in 5 years, and it looks like they have the finals for 3 more years. He’s super pumped (as am I) to see Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter mix it up Live! It’s been super cool to watch the races on Freecaster.tv with him in the am, but will be even cooler to watch in person!

Back to bike racing:

After the 24 hour, decided to don my Minerva Design kit and head over and hit up the GVCC Crit.  Legs were still a bit cooked, but managed to jump in and stay in the main break for 30 minutes or so out of 40.  Pack pulled us back in, was able to work my way to the front and challenge for the sprint.  Coming up the hill, had a solid jump, 2nd place was starting to move up.  Dropped another gear and still had some in the tank, and then ‘schlecked’ it as the chain jumped on the cassette.  Sat up as I saw Zito had 2nd wrapped up, then realized I still had a bit to go and raced to the line for 3rd, but was nipped and will settle for 4th.  Been a while since I earned some GVCC points but was super fun to race.

This past weekend went out and did a pretty good size ride from home around Canadaigua Lake.

Great View around that lake for sure. I slogged and suffered like hell on the ride as I didn’t get much sleep the night before, but still managed a pretty solid ride.

Farmall XC Summer Series #1

Farmall Summer series kicked off this past tuesday night.  Good to get back in the flow and get back to some hard racing again.  Managed to botch my start and mis my pedal and dropped into 4th, gasp!  I pushed my way up to 3rd and then followed Staffo into the woods in 2nd place.  He was ripping it up the climbs, but I fought the good fight, and even though he got a slight gap out of the woods, I managed to pull him back in before the end of the lap.  A hard charging Tim Pilato was hot on my heels and we managed to both get past Staffo around the start of the 3rd lap.  Got some separation from Tim after a few laps and held a steady gap to the line for the W!

But enough about the racing!  It’s about the post-ride I did with Lake!

Right after this, we were ripping down the grass, and at high speed, just before the 180 turn, it gets a bit choppy. Well, he grapped a wee bit too much front brake and did a massive high speed endo. Hit the ground face first, and the bike slammed him hard in the back of the head. I think if he did have any teeth he would have lost em in this crash! After a few minutes of tears (I think I would have cried had I crashed that hard), he was back on the bike and ripping it

Up this weekend is Sprague Brook: Singletrack Stampede! Looking forward to this one, gonna be a ton of fun!

At the start we rolled off the grass and onto the paved climb, I just basically jammed it here to string everyone out.  I knew the 40 seconds of climbing wouldn’t take too much and all it would do is really give me the lead into the singletrack.  From there it was mostly just rolling and keeping the pace high.  Right away, Rob was on my wheel and Doug Rusho was in 3rd (not sure who was in 4th).  There’s not too many opportunities to make a move in the early singletrack, so I stayed tight and let things be.

As we crossed the road and hit the sidehill climb, I really gassed it.  I knew this climb well, practiced attacking here and practiced the roll-out at the top where I would have to keep the effort up as it was still climbing and it was new trail so it’d be nice and loamy.  Didn’t really get any separation from Rob on the climb, but managed to get some separation from 3rd & 4th.  Descending the orange trail I was able to get a few seconds between us, & tried to gas it coming up the Brown trail rooty climb, but Rob was hanging on with everything he had and clawed his way onto my wheel.  Some harder efforts on the Brown trail, but never really shook him at all.

Click Here for the Big Version: Flickr resized it tiny

Coming off the Brown Trail onto the more open Orange Trail, I hit the gas on the slight climb.  Was actually able to get a few seconds of separation here and even more again on the descent.  As we bombed the trail, they rerouted us through a new section I hadn’t ridden and it was quite wet.  My front wheel slipped in the mud as I caught big air coming into it and he quickly pulled the gap right back.  Bummer for sure.  Railed the purple trail with everything I had and still, he was right there at every section.  My last shot was to drill it up the grassy open climb and get some separation.  I didn’t really attack but turned the screws on him for the whole long minute up the climb.  We were both gassed and still no separation, but still had a little bit of climbing left.  I heard him breathing pretty heavy and hit him with the knockout punch.  Drilled it again immediately and finally got the separation I needed.  I had about 8-10 seconds heading down the final descent and knew I just had to get back across the road and keep it together.

Bombed the descent and got a few extra seconds, but coming off the descent, the course was rerouted onto the red trail.  I was set up to make a left turn and cross the road.  But we had to go right on a greasy corner.  I had to pull up, and head down the red trail.  Super tight trail with zero visibility, off-camber, etc and I’d not ridden it in a long time (they actually removed it when the rain came).  As a result I had to lighten up and try not to crash.  This let Rob back on.  At this point, I basically ‘sat-up’.  There really wasn’t too many more opportunities to get separation.  Had a quick chat with Rob, we decided to cool our jets and SPRINT for MAD MONEY!  Regardless of winner, we’d split the cash.

As we came out of the woods, I swung it wide.  This gave Rob the lead onto the pavement.  I’m sure it didn’t really matter, but was nice to sit in 2nd wheel.  He tried to up the pace, but I hung on without issue.  We rolled off the pavement around the bathrooms and back onto the pavement for the final 100 meters.  I scouted the corner just incase.  Super tight left hand turn.  Slightly off-camber with tons of rock-fill everywhere.  You hit this wrong, you were gonna drift and miss a pedal stroke and have to give it some gas on the little rise up to the road.  I set myself up around the corner, Rob took inside a little tight and had to miss that pedal stroke.  I carried my momentum and as we hit the road I was already going faster than him, slammed the pedals with everything and got a few bike lengths for the W!  Official lap time 42:57?? (computer reads 41:54).

9 attacks on my behalf that lasted from 20-90 seconds greater than  120% of FTP.  52 efforts that ranged from 1-15 seconds that were greater than 150% of FTP.  All in all; 15 minutes (36%) of my lap was spent Anaerobic!!  Needless to say, I was spent on my 2nd lap and rolled a 48 minuter as I tried to recover.  Also, not that it mattered, but about 15 minutes into my lap, the nose of my saddle shot straight up.  Making it super tough to get forward on the nose when climbing and forcing me to stand quite a bit more than I would have liked (I fought the saddle issue for many laps and took a seatpost rebuild when Marky-Mark got there to finally fix it).

Thats it for now..

And that I exactly did.  It downpoured pretty hard Friday evening, but trails were so dry, the only thing really affected was that the roots were wet.  Trails still had some awesome grip and quite dry for the most part everywhere.  I climbed up Stid Hill and rode up to the Tower Drop.  Ran into a few cyclists coming down the 4 wheeler trail, that was a first.  Luckily was able to help them find there way.  After hitting up the long climb, dropped down the tower drop.  Now if you’ve been lucky enough to descend the tower drop, you know it’s near vertical.

Well, mix that in that it’s really technical and steep and loose, add some wet roots and only 1 line on hte descent.  Mix it up and add a nice crash in there and you get a nice chainring scratch and impalement on the lower leg.  Looks like I was attacked by a bear-vampire.  4 streaks of gash down my let, with 2 ‘bite’ marks where the chainring dug right in.  Got a few odd remarks about the wound this weekend, but I sucked it up and charged on.

Took things up to OCP and ripped my fastest lap on the Hardcore 24 course.  41 minutes nearly on the nose.  Probably would’ve been a few seconds faster had I not hit the deck when I came off the course onto the pavement!  Turned a little early on the wet pavement and hit the gas to sprint and “Down goes Igby”.  Awfully nice to be charging hard and dump it right in front of the party houses with all the onlookers.  Thankfully that was the last time I crashed, but with that I was pretty tore up literally.  Little blood mixed with dirt, never hurt anybody!

After hitting up OCP, I decided to rip up over in Cutler and then take the road down and climb up over Bristol mountain.  36 miles & 5k feet of climbing was more than enough for the day.

Sunday had plans to go rip Dryer rd in prep for the Fat Tire Fest coming this weekend.  But while watching the tour, came down with the weirdest sickness.  Was freezing my ass while it was 80 degrees outside and couldn’t eat a thing.  Skipped out on the day and just relaxed as much as I could.

I’m skipping the 6 Hours of Power this weekend.  Racing is expensive & so is a wedding, I’m pretty sure I don’t get to pick where the money goes at the moment.

Hope the rain holds off tonight, get some more trail ripping in tomorrow night & a road ride tonight, then some good racing this weekend at the Fat Tire Fest!

Race

My race faired ok, got the holeshot out of the gate and was the first one into the woods. Doug Rusho was in tow and Andy August was shortly behind. There was really no place to shake Doug as the course is super tight, and super fast. So he hung on my wheel for the first 3 laps. I gave him the lead into the singletrack at the start of the 4th lap. 50 yds in, I hear a loud clank and my pedals stopped moving. Look down and somehow the front derailleur swung into the chainrings. Weird part was, I didn’t hit anything, was jra’ing on the trail. Ends my race quickly. Ah well, the legs felt like crud still from the weekends big efforts.

Side Bonus? Set personal best power or 2nd best numbers across the board, so from is there. Plus, I got to ride a few laps with Lizzy and Lake. I’ll happily take a DNF if that’s my reward. Hopefully I can upswing the form some for this next month of racing!

Gotta get the bike tuned up, big weekend on tap!

This past weekend I managed to get down to OCP both on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I ripped around for 2 laps, and thankfully the course is mostly marked. Though I was confused a bit crossing the Orange trail and getting back onto the Brown. Looks like they still need to build a section. Which personally I think is dumb, you guys need to stop building trails a month before a race and make the racers burn them in. Seriously?? Remember last year, yeah the course sucked when it rained?? I don’t know why they aren’t using the Orange Trail? It’s pretty kick ass and it was the only trail that held up to the rain last year. Plus its for like 100 yards?? Besides they completely eliminate the Awesome overlook view of the valley?? That’s all part of the allure, but I guess not /rant over…

Ok, where was I, got off track a bit there… So Saturday was 2 laps on the course, and sunday I went down and did some extra riding. Started at Parish Hill, up through Hi-Tor, down the DEC, up Gannett Hill, 2 laps on the Hardcore course and out the orange trail, down the abandoned road, stop get a chocolate milkshake and roll back to the Car. Seriously, nothing better than rolling up to the ice cream stand covered in sweat, dirt and grime and ordering up a chocolate milkshake for the mile roll back to the Car! I managed to rip some laps on the course and 45 minutes seems to be my gold standard, give or take, even 3 hours into the ride, still turned a 45 minute lap. I think, fresh and race day… 40 minutes will be the fastest, maybe sub 40 if it’s super dry day.

Needless to say, the big frigging deal of the weekend was me seeing a Black Bear up in Hi-Tor!! After crossing the 4 way intersection and heading towards the DEC, as I was up top by the ponds, I came rolling around the corner and BAM! almost ran into him. Scared the crap out of me and he took off into the woods. Tried to get the camera out, but no dice. He was gone! Thankfully the rest of the ride was just super fun ripping on the bike and I didn’t get eaten

Last Night, Hanggi and I ripped some laps on the Hardcore course again. As is par for the course, turned some 45 minute laps! Frig, I gotta get faster! But we rode pretty solid and pretty much Sweet Spotted for 90 minutes! Just railing the course and getting the lines down.

This weekend, will be hitting up Naples with Brendan and the Minerva Design Crew to have a good fun team ride one the road bike, haven’t done been out with the guys in a bit! Need to catch up!

Super fun time, but I’m still tired and still trying to catch up on everything. Racing some cross country this weekend at Williams Lake. Not sure why I signed up for a race thats 4 hours away, but ah well. It’s xc racing and it’ll be a blast!