another Alina photo shoot

Alina wasn't very cooperative this time. We'll have to get Kate to come back, now that our yard is all done. But she took a few nice shots regardless.

more pics from the wknd

party pics

Saturday's hike up Little French

We had a nice clear morning for our hike up to the top of Little French Gulch. My parents did awesome and were much faster than I thought they'd be. The flowers were still amazing up there.

35

wow, 4 days since last post. unacceptable, but I did have a great weekend. 35 yesterday! the official start of middle age? do i have a crisis? i don't think so. life is great. parents in town this weekend, and Helen's as well, that equates to all of Alina's grandparents. pretty cool. weather was perfect for my birthday yesterday. started out early at 6a for a nice mtb ride with Scott. Sallie Barber to Nightmare up to Trail of Tears back down to Barney. then a great hike up Little French with my parents. plenty of good pics coming tonight.

Wasatch 50K

Helen climbed over 10,000' in 30mi. you don't see that kind of elevation profile in a wimpy bike race, that's for sure. we'd be pushing our bikes for hours. cool pic below of Helen snatching the $100 prime for 1st woman to the top of the Snowbird tram.

X.0

anyone have one of these lying around? I need one...

Monarch Crest pics

what more can I say? incredible views up there. another pic batch this afternoon.

good and bad night ride

the good....




the BAD! that's my rear deraileur after it burst apart...

Breck 100

my man Toast did it again, not surprisingly. sounds like he felt crummy, but that's not stopping him. check out the SDN article.

Monarch Crest

was as great as it always is. 35mi of mostly singletrack bliss. trails were kinda damp with plenty of muddy puddles in the heavily forested sections, thanks to the previous night's deluge. Sounds like the central mtns. have been getting as much precip as we have here in Summit. Pics coming tonight.

morning ride

some pics from this morning's ride. I did 3 rides today, totaling about 4hrs. Not bad considering the weather. that's me huffin up Little French Gulch. the wildflowers are absolutely stunning. we're looking forward to doing a little hike up there next wknd with my folks. Monarch Crest tomorrow!!!!!!

another Tour leader, another cheat?

surely this is no surprise to anyone who has followed cycling lately...

Rasmussen too good to be true?

Friday night lights....

as in, it's Friday so we're night ridin'. sweet! light is charged, the deluge hasn't yet happened, dirt is tacky. hopefully I will post some pics tomorrow. spoke too soon, it is raining now...

holy gully washer batman

it is pouring rain, hard to even hear in my office right now it is raining so hard. I don't think it's rained this hard since sometime last summer. Clean this dusty town up!

Copper

didn't have a good ride. was at the top of the 1st big climb and a rock (more like a pebble) lodged itself between my front derailleur and the clamp, so I couldn't shift out of the small ring. after about 10min I finally fig'd it out, but by then I was behind everyone and just called it a day. there will be better races in my future. and while warming-up one of the brake pads on the rear fell out, but luckily I had a mechanic at the bottom give me a new one for free! Looking forward to more hours on the bike. This morning I rode the new stock run, basically up X10U8 to Side Door, up and around Gibson Hill to Gold RUn Rd, Slalom single, down to middle Flume. It was awesome. 8mi in 44min. Then at lunch I was on the road bike to Frisco and back. Got soaked, but had a good time.

update from neanderthal boy

well, my face is swollen and my skin is nice and tight. looks like i got in a fight with a cheese grater, or orbital sander. a combo of elephant man and freddie krueger. it's nice to talk to guests down in the lobby with my face oozing. physically speaking, I otherwise just have a headache and my neck is sore. mentally, while the body can still pedal a bike, I am not ready to ride much, let alone race. I may be skipping out of the Copper local race, we'll see, it'd be the first time I missed that one in 4-5 years.

face plant

usu that is a facetious word, or it is used in exaggeration. well, not today. I got sucked between the timbers of the dinky little log bridge across Horeshoe Gulch as I was about 3min into a ride up the CO Trail. My bike stopped as it got hung up sideways, and I launched forward and landed square on the lower left part of my face. luckily I didn't hit my forehead and get knocked out, or lose any of my teeth. only some nasty road rash and a headache for a bit. what a dumb move, as i've ridden that log crossing many times. not today, I got worked and now I am paying for it. looks like dirt on my face, but it's not. i've cleaned it many times, it's just the beginnings of some nasty scab formation.

phonetics

mid summer

that's about where we are. weather is awesome. upper 40s in the morning, mid 70s in daytime. last night's Friday the 13th group night ride was cool. troy, matt dennis came. we went up and over Wheeler Pass, then descended Wheeler Trail to the intersection of Miner's Creek Trail. At this point, it was already 11:30p, but Dennis' rear brake lever was pulling all the way back to his bar, so he wanted to bow out of the whole enchilada and just descent to Copper and ride the bike path to Frisco. None of us argued, since we still wouldn't be back home til 1:30a. Oh well it is cool that we hung together and the lower 20min of the descent were amazing.

Today I rode on the bike path and it was a nice change, though packed full of tourists. Big ride tomorrow.

Peaks disappointment

well I rolled a 44:17 last night. over a minute faster than last year, but nonetheless I have a disappointing taste in my mouth right now. I should have been in the mid 43 range I think. it is a difficult course to pace yourself well, as the first 20min you are on the rivet climbing. I felt good in the last 15min, which was a goal, but at the expense of perhaps going a little too easy early. more importantly, I felt as if I hadn't raced this morning, which leads me to believe that I didn't run the tank empty last night. what the hell?! Tim had a scorching ride of 43:17 on his bone of a bike. that is impressive, though the course is tailor made for a single. I hope to do better at Copper, which is definitely my kind of course. My debut in the pro category (yeah it's a joke really) was about what I expected, 5th out of 6, with the one guy I beat a kid from Steamboat. So amongst the very few locals who race pro, I got last. If I had stayed in Expert 35+. I would have finished 3rd. weak. the one bright spot about last night was the many compliments people were giving on Helen's great race over in Vail last weekend. amazing what a little press can do. and oh yeah, Alina and I went to Quandary for dinner and the post race party.

road ride today. i have some angst in me that needs to come out. maybe Dennis and I deserve to get lost on tomorrow night's epic night ride.

one more for Helen

article in the local newspaper

Dragontales?

this was Alina at daycare this morning when I dropped her off. apparently, she likes to wear little costumes for hours at school, according to one of the teachers. she said sometimes Alina will wear it until it's time to go outside. how funny!

Vail Hill Climb yesterday

from the Vail Daily-

"Helen Cospolich, 30, took the women’s title at 1:02:06. Anita Ortiz, 43, was second at 1:04:03 and Susan Nuzman, 40, was third at 1:05:25."

Helen defends her title at the Vail Hill Climb

since we don't sleep in much anymore, Helen decided to defend her title in Vail at the Vail Hill Climb. Not a 10K, but a 7.5mi uphill run to the top of the gondola at Vail. She won! Alina and I had a great time riding the gondola and checking out Helen. As you can see in the last picture, Alina wasn't too cooperative for the awards ceremony.

pics from the F50

Helen took some good pics at the 4th of July parade, which started the bike race...

congrats Ken and Kim!

Saturday was a great day for a great wedding out on the Peak to Peak Highway near Ken's house. we had a great time. plenty of photos to go around here.

lawn & fence done

finally, we have it all done. now just watering the sod a lot in hopes that it takes well. check out more photos in the web album here.

follow the Tour on Google Earth

thanks Steve for this scoop.

check out the Tour with help from Google Earth. This might be worth checking out.

B-63

is this backyard race in my future? the little sibling of the more famous Breck 100. since I can't "handle the whole enchilada," this might be for me. 63mi and more challenging (lots of singletrack, higher elev, steeper climbs in spots), prob 7+hrs of riding. but damn good trails......hmmm.

Helen was on the radar for top women at WS100

cool, this guy runs an ultrarunning website, and in this article he gave Helen 20-1 odds to win at the Western States 100 a couple wknds back. super cool she is getting some national recognition.


Speed Goat odds at Western States 100


Sim Jae Duk…5-2 Nikki Kimball…7-2

Brian Morrison…3-1 Kami Semick…4-1

Greg Crowther…4-1 Anne Lundblad…6-1

Lon Freeman…5-1 Bev Abbs…10-1

Eric Grossman…8-1 Annette Bednosky…10-1

Graham Cooper…8-1 Helen Cospolich…20-1

Eric Skaden…10-1

Hal Koerner…12-1

Phil Kochik…15-1

Jim Huffman…15-1

Ian Torrence…18-1

Jon Olsen…18-1

Ken's bachelor party

12:30a this morning, just after the limo bus dropped us off at Jim's house for the night. Ken feels about as good as he looks...

rain

cool it is raining. can't quite remember the last time it rained here...

F50 semi-explosion

wouldn't say a total bonk, but the 2nd time up Boreas was not very good. 4:38 is not a time to dwell on or write home about. matter of fact it was 10min slower than last year, and 21min slower than my best time. It is getting hard to put in the training hours for such a long race with family and work piling up (let alone landscaping). but it was still a fun Fourth. Next year I may change my goals and try to bust out a sub 2hr lap as part of a team. Top SSer was 4:29, nowhere near Tim G's 4:09 from a few years back!

check out Mark Weir's backyard pumptrack, wow!

warm and dry

only .44" of water in June, well below the average of 1.4". June 2007 was the 16th driest June on record, going back to the late 1800s. on top of that it is unusually warm even before sunrise. this morning it was a beautiful 51 degrees at 5:30a when I left for my short ride. below from the SDN-

The latter (reading) is consistent with data showing that temperatures in the region are warming even more at night than in the day. Most climate models for global warming scenarios predict this trend will continue.

Global warming is interesting. There is a great article in Newsweek that shows arguments for both sides: caused by man and green house gas increases, or just a pattern that is part of history. Maybe I can find it and post it here somehow.

record heat in Breck

check out this article about the record heat in Breckenridge as of late. On Sunday, Breck tied a record high of 84 degrees, last achieved on June 30, 1935. I absolutely love it, b/c I know just a month ago it was snowing, and in as little as 2-3 months we could very well see snow again. Surprised we hadn't heard any more heat complaints from our rental guests in Breck, since no one has any AC up here.

Cruised up Sallie Barber and down Barney Ford this morning to warm up for the \Firecracker 50 tomorrow. Luckily after about 1/2hr my legs started to come around, unlike the slugs I was pedaling with on Sunday. Hopefully the heat continues for the race, although a rain shower to tack up some of the dusty trails would be nice.

income and housing price gap growing in Breck

excellent article this morning in the paper. some good excerpts below. all of these things relate directly to Helen and I's living in Wellington. 2 car garage...check. deck space...check. having our own yard...check. desire for community...check. family orientation...check. proximity to places of work...check. recreational amenities...check.

*********************************************************************

In 1999, the median single-family home price was $317,500. According to the 2007 numbers, that has increased to an astounding $670,300. Incomes have not kept pace with that rise in home prices, so that the median home price in 2007 is about 851 percent higher than the median income ($78,800). In 1999, that gap was considerably smaller, with the median home price only 491 percent higher than the median income ($64,600).

Based on the information gathered during the survey, locals value community character above all else, encompassing such factors as family orientation, neighborhood appeal, proximity to places of employment, services and recreational amenities.

About 75 percent of the residents who want to buy a home in Summit County are looking for small, single-family (two bedroom) homes with a base price of about $200,000.

Balconies and decks were the most important amenities, followed closely by a desire for a two-car garage and a private yard. Locals are also thinking green tabbing energy efficiency as the fourth-ranked amenity out of 10 offered.

The emphasis needs to be on building neighborhoods, not just on the number of units, the study concludes.

The survey also asked specifically about the desirability of deed-restrictions on units that cap appreciation, with the option of buying out of the cap for $100,000. Just more than half the respondents said they would be inclined to pay the extra amount to remove the restrictions.

yard

wow I've had a lot going on lately. no blog for a few days, weak. we layed sod this wknd. it looks nice, hopefully it will take well. Pics tonight. Strategic is there now putting up our fence, so the landscaping should be finished by week's end, barring any bad weather. Warm and dry has been the patter lately. We have all our windows open and are now dealing with gnats and flies in the house. Luckily we haven't seen large amounts of mosquitoes yet, but next time we get a rainy pattern, surely they will be out.

Just now getting over my cold, rode part of the F50 course yesterday and my legs felt like crap. Hopefully I will feel good on Wednesday. Flatted yesterday, so another UST tire is in the works before race day. The trails are super dusty. That will be a major concern for breathing on the first lap Wednesday.

Here are a couple photos of Helen from the Western States 100 last wknd. Courtesy of Glenn Tachiyama, copyright 2007.