Back to Austin

But before we get to that, I raced the Singlespeed class at the first DORBA race last weekend!
I had no idea what to expect, so I started off just following the leaders. I went into the woods in third, and after a couple miles me and second passed the leader. That was the last time I saw anyone on bike until I flatted with 4ish miles to go and didn't have everything I needed to fix it...
But, I can say I most likely would have gotten second by looking at the time splits, and I missed out on a ribbon (OMG), so it isn't that big of a deal. I really need to quit getting flats though...

I like this picture:

Courtesy of Mom

Then a couple days later, I'm back in the ATX. Me and Joseph and my Dad built our bike rack, and it's awesome. But I'm not going to post any pictures so you have to come visit if you want to see it. DO IT. (You know you want to!)

Other than that, I went and rode yesterday and today (and dragged Joseph along today) and it is hot. Wait, I don't think you caught that...
IT.
IS.
HOT.
Much better.

More to come soonish. I promise!

Post #325

Or, a little bit of everything.

I haven't been riding too much since nationals, but it's starting to pick up again. There is a DORBA race this weekend before I head back to Austin for the fall semester and I'm going to give racing singlespeed a shot. I rode the course yesterday and it seemed pretty good. At a pretty easy pace anyway. We'll see how the race goes, might be interesting.

A week or two ago I took a trip to Austin to help Joseph move into our apartment. It took a couple trips to get his junk over, and then we made a Home Depot / IKEA run, and on top of our 55" TV from Craigslist, have just about everything we're going to need:

Living room set up


Better shot of the rug


Table #1


Table #2 (we still need red/white checkerboard tablecloths...)


Trash can of awesome



Me and the AJ have been putting some more work into the '57 too, and the front end is starting to come along:


Maybe it'll be finished sometime in the next couple years...

Sol Vista: MTB Nationals '09

Last night I figured out what I was going to write about the race, and then made the mistake of gong to bed instead of actually writing it. Thus, I don't remember, so I'll just make it up as I go. Sound good? Good.

Going into the race I felt more confident than I had the last couple years; I had a (much) better Texas season, and had been training pretty hard. I actually lined up on the front row instead of at the back, and was sitting mid pack-ish off up the start hill. When the race finally got to singletrack for the first time, like 3.5 miles in, I was around 10th, and could see all the way up to 3rd (turns out 1st and 2nd got DQd for cutting the course...).
Everyone spreadd out over time, but I was still top 10 starting the second lap. This time it got harder to tell where I was as the leaders from other classes started coming by, but I stayed around the same, maybe passing some people in my class and maybe getting passed by others.
Then the third lap hit. Maybe I didn't drink enough early in the race, maybe I didn't eat enough breakfast, who knows, but I did not have anything to finish off the race. The third lap was about two miles shorter than the first two, and my lap time was almost the same... I felt so bad that I didn't even care who passed me, I just wanted to make it to the finish.

I ended up 14th, less than 5 minutes out of 9th...
I felt bad for losing four or more spots so late in the race, but I had given it everything I had (my legs are still sore almost a week later) and I'm still happy with the way the first 2/3 of the race went down. I know a little more about what I need to work on for training, and learned some more about nutrition. We'll see what next year brings.

Filler

Nationals recap coming soon.

Have a teaser picture:

Back to Granby

We made it up to Granby earlier today. We were a little early to check into the hotel, so even though we weren't riding a trip up to the resort ensued. We watched the downhillers hit some jumps and talked to everyone we knew that had already ridden the course. I still don't know what to expect when we ride tomorrow. Well, except that the start goes up an annoying steep hill. Perfect.

Yup

Got some good riding in in Austin. And I think Wheel is ready to move to Austin and go to UT... Anywho, we hit up two kinda hilly, really hot days. My legs were feeling it at first, but by the end I guess they had gotten used to the short steep Austin climbs again because I was feeling good by time we left on Tuesday.
We hit up the snow cone place right by my apartment too. Somehow I had never been there before, but I will be back. Pretty much the best snow cone I've ever had!

Anywho, I'm just about finished packing to head back to Colorado in the morning. It'll be nice to get back to somewhere where it less than 100 degrees again. I'm also ready to get back and see the course, which they completely changed since the first time I was there. From the sounds of it, I think it'll suit me more than the original course. We will see.

Fireworks and Stuff

The last few days haven't been too eventful, just working in the morning, riding in the afternoon, and chillin' with my people at night.
Yesterday though, for the Fourth we continued tradition and went up to Lake Lavon to blow stuff up again! As per always, it was a good time.
Tomorrow me and Wheel are going to make a trip to Austin to get some (hilly) riding in to finish out the low altitude hard part of training. Take a couple days off after that, and then I'll be back in Colorado by the weekend!

Texas is hot

Well, the day after the last post we ended up spending closer to 5 hours on the bike. It was some of the best riding on the trip though. The Rim Trail is always fun, and after that we hit the road to Lanedo, which is paved for about 5 miles, dirt for about 6, and all slightly uphill. That was followed by about another 45 minutes of singletrack climbing up to "four corners" and from there it was rolling jeep road to Sunnyside. Sunnyside started out as rolling bench cut in the side of a probably 60 degree or more hill, then turned into fast singletrack down the side of a less steep section, and finally into very technical switchbacks the rest of the way into Aspen. I'll just say I'm glad I had disc brakes.

We gladly took Monday off, did an easy ride across Cross Mountain and Government Tuesday, and hit up one last Aspen Cycling Club road race Wednesday evening before heading home.

The race was from Basalt up past Ruedi Reservoir and back, a total trip of just under 50 miles. My legs were still dead from the weekend, and I got shelled off the back after a couple attacks on the biggest climb of the race. Eventually I fell into a group of about 8 and we stuck together until the biggest hill on the return trip where we lost a few people. At one point we saw another group up the road, but we were never able to catch up. I ended up 16th, which wasn't great, but considering the riding we had done the couple days before the race, I'll take it.

Thursday we took the bikes to be shipped to Dallas and then jumped on a plane ourselves. A few hours later we made it home. Now I just have to get used to this whole thing where the temperature is like 3000 degrees. Although, the presence of Oxygen in the air is making up for it a little.
I'm taking a few days off right now, while the bikes get here here and whatnot, then it'll be right back to it until the 7th, when me and the parentals are heading back up to Granby for the race!

Whew

The last couple days have been hard. Lots of good riding though. We took Tuesday off after the trip to Colorado Springs and Granby, but since then...

Wednesday was another Aspen Cycling Club race, this time a circuit race on Buttermilk Mountain (where the winter X-Games are). The course was about 15 minutes, 12 of which was uphill at about 15%. Four laps later my legs were quite sore and I finished in 12th. Could have been a little better, but I didn't know the downhill section and kept getting gapped through it. Oh well.
Thursday, Will's dad (John/Snow White) got into town, and we rode up and back down Independence pass. My time from the first gate to the summit was right at 1 hour 26 minutes. Back down was 28 minutes. We ran into Ride the Rockies - they were coming over the pass, so we got caught up in some of their traffic on the way down... That made it interesting though, passing a few hundred people down a mountain... SWEET!
Yesterday the three of us headed back to Red Hill along with fellow Texan Steven Hardy who is up here training for the 100 miles of Leadville in a few weeks. As per usual that trail was good.
Today John skipped out, but the rest of us rode the Government trail, which just opened today after Elk Calving Season, into Aspen then went up Smuggler mountain, down into Hunter Valley, and so on. Ended up with about 3.5 hours total!
Tomorrow should be about as long - we're riding the Rim trail, up into Lanedo, then down into Aspen. My legs are already tired enough, so that'll be good fun.

Picture fun time!

Independence Ghost Town, on the way up the pass


View from the top




Perfect helmet for long road rides...


Maroon Creek from the ride today

Here and there

This weekend we took a trip to Colorado Springs for a UCI race and Granby to preride the course for Nationals.

The Colorado Springs course was interesting - most of it was on a wider than singletrack but not jeep-road gravel path type thing, but then there would be big piles of rocks that it was impossibly to take a good line through. Then on the start line, they decided that all of the Experts were going to have a mass start!
Luckily I was on the front row, but that didn't stop about 10 people from other classes who could ride slightly uphill open stuff but had to stop and walk as soon as there was a rock more than an inch tall from getting in front of me before all of the rocks...
Eventually I got back around most of them, but still had no idea who was in my class and who wasn't. Basically the rest of the race was me trying to pass anyone who I could, and I guess it kinda worked, because I ended up 5th in 19-29 and 2nd in 19-24.

At Granby they didn't have the entire course cut yet, so we got to ride up the mountaian, then take 3the easier downhill courses back down. Unfortunately, our legs were tired for some reason, so we only felt like going up two or three times, which meant we only got to go down a couple times (which was pretty cool - the course we took had ~70 jumps and berms!)

Anywho, we're back in Snowmass now, just in time for some waiter to think he was sneaky enough to pocket a $20 and put some extra on my card... Then try to guilt-trip me when I caught him and and left a sup-standard tip...