Yard work is bad for mountain biking

...or I'm just woefully out of shape.

I spent all day yesterday diggin' stuff, haulin' stuff, and generally trying to act manly to generate and rebuild some of my guy cred.

Then today I went mountain biking and generally flailed about for 3 hours. My forearms and shoulders were too beat up to even control the bike. I went down once, found myself wandering off the trail dozens of times, and almost introduced myself head on into a rather large tree at 20mph.

So since I'm not too good at the manly stuff, and trying to be good at it just makes me suck at what I'm almost good at, I guess I'll just have to give up rebuilding the guy cred and focus on being a leg shaving girlie man.

Wednesday night mountain biking

Last night I drove up to Spokane for their Wednesday night mountain bike race series. They had beer afterward, so it was obviously worth the trip. For an urban trail system, I was very impressed. We did two 9 mile loops, and it looks like there's a lot more out there, although some of it is currently under water. The terrain reminded me a lot of 9-mile up near Wausau, except that the trails were generally straighter and faster.

I had a lot of fun. My goal was to keep the fast guy in sight for the first lap. I almost made it, but then he checked out and I rode the rest of the race by myself. My second goal then became to ride the second lap as fast as the first. I'm not sure if I made it, but if not, I came within 20 seconds or so. I guess I forgot to mention they had timing chips and a clock at the finish. I'm not sure what they do with the times though, as I haven't found a website or anything.

The weirdest part about the night was that a few people recognized my name. I introduced myself to two guys, and both recognized it. One of them congratulated me on how well I did at Mt. Hood.

In any event, it was a great time. I just wish it weren't 90 minutes away.

evaP INW

It's a bit late in the year for the evaP, but I figured I could at least squeeze it in before the 'official' start of summer tomorrow. The forecast suggested a 40% chance of rain, so I was optimistic that I'd see some proper conditions. But instead, it was sunny and 70 degrees.

The only other potentially interested parties were out of town -- one at a bike race in Boise and the other buying a house in Montana -- so I rolled out solo (at least no one was roller skiing). It was probably for the best that I hit it alone, as it turned out to be a bit harder than anticipated. In fact, I was late for an appointment with the monkey and had to cut the ride short, missing 10 miles of gravel and a couple of significant hills.

4 hours, 55 miles, 15 miles of gravel, 11 miles of not roads (at a consistent, and annoying, 2.5% grade).

Amnesia

Last fall I took the 'cross bike out for a traverse of the mountain. The road is rutted, covered in softball sized rocks, too steep up for my gearing, too steep down for my brakes. I get lost. The corporate sponsor finds a map and (via my cell phone) guides me in an appropriate direction. Four hours of torture later I arrive home and tell my wife that I don't need to do that ever again.

So what did I do yesterday? (Luckily there was still too much snow, so I turned around and rocked the 'cross bike on some singletrack instead).

Last night we took the monkey down to the school to ride his new bike. He's getting it down pretty well, but he hasn't quite figured out how to turn, and eventually he cuts it too tight and goes down, scraping his hands and bonking his helmeted head on the pavement. Not quite 30 seconds later, with tears still in his eyes, he's jumping back on and rolling again.

I don't know how many times I've been on a ride, or in a race, and wanted to cry, or get off my bike and lay down, or just throw the thing off a cliff. Riding hard hurts. Racing hurts. And the only way to do it well is to force yourself to suffer for hours on end, day after day. It never gets easier. No other sport requires the same kind of self-induced brutality.

And no matter how much it hurts, or how much skin you abandon on the pavement, you roll out again. I've never quite figured out if I simply can't remember how much it hurt, or if I'm too stupid to learn.

I think the only thing that's similar, and both better and worse, is having kids.

The wrong place to be

We just got the cheapo disposable camera photos back. Most aren't worth much, but I figured I should post my "finish line" photo from the final stage of Mt. Hood. In this riveting action sequence, I'm trying to get the destroyed buckle on my shoe to work with a multi-tool as an impatient doctor starts looking for her shears to cut the shoe off.

This might take a while

As she was scrubbing the gravel out of my road rash, the ER doc in the med tent tried to convince me that with the Tegaderm, my wounds would heal in 3 days. That hasn't been my experience, and judging by her 'skill' in applying bandages, it appeared that she usually passed that task off to someone else and didn't have much experience with how well it actually worked. Still, I was hopeful.

Well, it's been over 4 days, and I'm a long way from healed. The road rash has a long way to go, and my ankle still feels like someone smashed it with a hammer. I was able to ride for over 2 hours yesterday without too much trouble, but I couldn't twist my foot to get out of my pedal, which almost caused a minor problem at a stop light.

This photo is my ankle today at 6pm -- 4 days and 6 hours after the initial injury. My foot is usually about 2/3 that size, and that red thing isn't part of my normal wardrobe either.

Something isn't quite right...

Surviving the Hood

The last two days didn't go quite how I'd hoped. Yesterday's stage went well until about 5 miles to go, when I missed a split (i.e., I got dropped) and the two most dangerous guys behind me in the GC didn't. I ended up losing 2:27 and dropping into 3rd overall. It was a weird day. I was pretty depressed afterward, but I soon realized that but for losing the lead, I would have probably been happy with how the day went. And since I never expected to be in the lead, I shouldn't get too worried about losing the lead and dropping to "only" 3rd. Hell, before the race I debated posting a goal of top 5 here, but I was worried that was out of reach, so I didn't.

So I entered the crit today in 3rd, with a 2 second gap on 4th. My plan was to stay near the front, hope for a split, and maybe lap the field and pick up a minute or two. The pace was brutal, but the field never split and nothing got away. With about 15 minutes to go, I saw the kid in 2nd and realized that I'd stay in 3rd. But I was feeling pretty good and hoped to pull off another win. It was a good course for me, fairly technical with an uphill finish.

Except I never made it to the finish.

With about 5 laps to go, I entered the crazy, off camber hairpin in pretty good position, but two or three guys took it too wide and hit the hay bales. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but I think the guys outside of me swerved to avoid them and knocked me down. The first guy to hit me kind of bounced me, then another guy must have hit him, because I went down pretty fast. I didn't hit too hard, but the rest of the field ran me over and ground me into the pavement. I carried my bike down to the pit and the official told me that free laps were over and that I was done. I said, 'please tell me that I get the pack time,' and he said yes and that I should probably head to the medical tent.

So I 'finished' my first stage race while sitting in the medical tent. But 3rd overall is much more than I ever expected, and other than the $1k or so of damage to my bike, I'm really happy with how the race went. I'll definitely do this again.

Now I've just got to hope someone steals my bike out of my car tonight.

Mt. Hood Day 2

I have no idea how today went, but it was a lot of fun. I never imagined a time trial would be fun, but it was a blast. It had a fair amount of climbing, but that just means it had a bunch of really fast downhill sections with some tight turns. And then there's the narrow, downhill tunnel that scares the hell out of you as you blast through it at 35mph.

I started last of the Cat 3s, with the same time as 2nd place and 11 seconds up on 3rd. I ended up catching 4 guys, including the 2nd place rider. Hopefully I was fast enough to hold onto the lead, but I won't be too upset if I didn't. It's already been a great race and I'm having a lot of fun.

Tomorrow is 75 miles with 7,000 feet of climbing. The last two miles of the stage climb up to Mt. Hood Meadows, with a grade that allegedly averages 10%. That's steep enough and long enough to yield some pretty big gaps, so that's where the race will happen. We just have to ride 73 miles first and climb several thousand feet before we get there.

Edit on yesterday's results.

I guess I can't count when I'm cracking. The group I was with had 12 guys in it, plus the guy off the front, so I would have been 14th in the Cat 2 race. But I was still fastest of the slower, and my name is at the bottom of the TT start list for today.

Mt. Hood Day 1

Today was a weird day. I had come up with 57 different reasons why I'd get destroyed. I had my "wow, that guy looks fast" skills cranked up to 11. The first time up the climb hurt like hell. The first time down the hill saw me off in the gravel at 35mph and sliding out on a decreasing radius turn.

Then the race got easier.

And by the time it got hard again, I was 1k from the finish and where I needed to be. I didn't achieve my pie in the sky goal of top three in the overall race with the Cat 2s (although I did finish top 10), but I played the final 200m fairly well and ended up fastest among the slower. Now I get a cool yellow jersey and can call the event a success after the first day.

But I guess I can't bitch about not being a climber anymore. At least I have tomorrow to teach me that I'm not a time trialist.

Bar ends and really great dirt

Since I'm now in the land of elevation change, and I ride a hard tail, I decided to try out some bar ends again. It didn't take too long to figure out that I don't like them. They're great for climbing, but I've grown too accustomed to wide bars to make it work. My hands were too close together and started to go numb. And, more importantly, they look funny. So that's $30 down the drain. Maybe the corporate sponsor will like them.

But it wasn't a wasted day. Apparently it rained last night, leaving the trails slightly damp but not muddy. I'm not sure what kind of soil is up on the mountain, but today it was the stickiest I've ever ridden. I kept pushing harder and harder, and I couldn't get my front wheel to wash at all. In fact, my only 'mistakes' were when I hit it a bit too hard and overturned a couple of corners. It was a bit surprising to roll into a turn thinking I was going it bit faster than I probably should have, and then jump on it and turn too much. It was pretty cool. Even the King of Denzer would have ridden like a rock star.

And I figured out why I'm such a moron riding on logs. But I need to go back and see if I can repeat today's successes before I share that "secret."

Death Metal

I'd rather hear the SUV...

Wow! Let's do that again

That's the best phrase in cycling.

Spring is finally here. Eight hours on the bike over the weekend, sunburn, and some real singletrack.

After abusing myself on Saturday with 80+ miles (and over 5 hours, Mr. D.), with over 6,000 feet of climbing (allegedly), I sat in my rocking chair with a 'recovery drink' looking up at the mountain. There didn't seem to be much snow left up there.

Fast forward to Sunday morning and I've learned a few things. My new bike is an absolute blast on smooth, fast, winding singletrack. It's like switching from a big Caddy to a Lotus Elise.

And I love mountain biking. So let's do that again.

50 miles

Not quite 5 years ago, I had just quit my job and was using my time trying to mitigate 5 years of smoking and the 20 extra pounds I'd picked up along the way. I'd been riding my mountain bike again for a year or so (not too seriously), but had just purchased a road bike, which I had ridden 2 or 3 times. At some point around then, my brother and I were talking about riding, and he commented that a 50-mile ride was pretty hard. For some reason, I didn't really believe him, and decided I'd go ride 50 miles to prove that even a new rider could do it. (Of course, living now where he did then, I know that his "50-mile ride" was actually closer to 70 miles, without a flat spot on it, and with a 2,000 foot climb right in the middle. So I guess it was at least a little bit difficult.)

My corporate sponsor dropped my off on her way to work, and I had only one route home. They don't pave too many roads in Wyoming. Four hours later, after stopping to beg water from an elementary school and climbing the final 1,000 feet to my road, I see that I've only ridden 46 miles. I'm a stubborn bastard. I continue up the road for two miles, and then turn back into the wind and ride the longest two miles of my life. I think I was pushing 5 mph, bonked cold, not believing I'd ever make it home. I did, and immediately passed out for another 4 hours.

Five years and a few rides later, 50 miles is just another ride. Today was 52 miles and 2 hours, 40 minutes. It was windy. And there were even a few climbs. I stopped to get the mail at the end and then played basketball with my son.

The point is not that I'm a bad ass. I'm not. But we spend too much of our time worrying about who we are not, what we haven't done, who we wish we could be. We don't spend enough time looking back at where we've been. How far we've come. How interesting the path has been. We forget about the journey.

I entered a beginner mountain bike race in June 2003, and it took a lot of convincing to get me there. I didn't think I'd ever be good enough to upgrade to sport. Today I was talking to the King of Denzer, and when I told him I was thinking of downgrading, he told me that's b.s., I should be upgrading. And then, two 35-year-old men, with 3.5 kids and maybe 10 hours of sleep per night between us, spent 15 minutes figuring out if we could upgrade to something that's probably hard to upgrade to. And it didn't seem unreachable. Will it happen? Highly unlikely. But it didn't seem impossible.

And that change is the best part of the journey. Doing now what you wouldn't have done then. Believing something that seemed impossible then. And realizing that even if you don't get there, you've still had a lot of fun.

You get dropped in your first race. Then you don't. Then eventually you are at the front, even if just for a moment. It doesn't matter what race you are in, what it says on your license. There was a day when you were off the back before the first turn. That doesn't happen anymore.