Sally Barber Rd.

the western side of Sally Barber Rd, leading down towards the Barney Ford trail. i got out this morning at 6am for a quick 45min ride. the road is 90% clear & ridable, but some wet/snow spots on the northern aspects still.

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Top of gold run

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Alina at 7 months

 
  

stock run

up on the GH is ready. up Gold Run Rd. to the top, then down any myriad of the flume trails, which this time of year are actually carrying water. Pretty cool. It is esp. fun after the first 10min of climbing, as then my core temp is above freezing. This morning was 3 days in a row of 5:15am starts, but it is quite invigorating once you're warmed up. as you can see in the last pic, the upper part of the Upper Flume trail is not quite ready.

 
 
 
  

Angel Fire, part 2

after the xc I rode the lift up to get a few practice runs on the super d course. quite a well-balanced trail, as it offered loose rocky parts, slow-speed techy stuff int he woods, some big rocks, and then some high-speed pedaly stuff at the bottom. all in about 20 minutes, so endurance played in some too. after a very mediocre race the day before, I was looking forward to the new format and i felt no pressure at all. well the LeMans style start didn't suit me well, and I found myself at the back of about 15 guys pedaling away in the big chain ring. not too bad, until my chain fell off on the drive side, so I tried to shift it back in while pedaling. it started to kink some, so I had to pull over and stop or risk breakng the chain altogether. after stopping and fixing the chain derailment, I looked up to see that I was DFL in the middle of a huge dust cloud. well I passed quite a few people near the bottom to finish up 12th out of about 25 riders, but I could have done much better. it was good work though.

here are some pics of Alina and I right after the Super D finish on Sunday morning. she really seemed to like me all covered in dirt:

 
 
 
  

Angel Fire, part 1

last weekend we drove down to Angel Fire for the first MSC race of the year (since Moab was axed). though I didn't bring a whole lot of fitness down to the race, we were really looking forward to the road trip down to the warmer climate. we rented a dog-friendly condo near the base, and it worked out really well. helen and alina had a short trip to the base area where everything was going on each day. saturday's jalapeno cross country race was pretty tough. we did two 9mi laps with 2,200' of climbing each lap. pretty steep stuff near the top, and very rocky, so hike-a-bike was in order. not too bad, until the 2nd lap up, when I cracked some. soft pedaling to the top of the dh was all I could muster, so a mid-pack 10th place was all I had that day. we did go out to the local pizza joint with Seth & Molly for some good food that evening, esp. the garlic rolls.
 
 
 
  

In angel fire, new mexico

Alina likes the condo!

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Our first ride together

rolling along...

well the crappy weather seems to have subsided for now. yesterday warmed up nicely, with highs in the lower 60s. Alina and I took our first ride together, and she seemed to really enjoy the trailer. It was probably more exciting for me, as Mondays (and part of Tuesdays) now carry a whole new level of excitement for us. We had a great Mother's Day down in Boulder. Helen humbled some runners as she took 1st in the mommy-with-jogger category, and an even more impressive 12th out of 1079 runners overall. I was lucky enough to meet Ken for a nice ride up at Walker Ranch. May is definitely my favorite time of year down in Boulder. Things are very green, and the temps are just about perfect. Brunch at the Harvest House capped off the nice day. On the way back up the hill, we stopped in Golden to see Alina's aunt Diana and uncle Josh. Hard to imagine they will be getting married in about a month!

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Lunch with g'ma

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Walker ranch

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Dropped alina off!

sunny, but cold

well it's nice to see lots of blue sky and sunshine too. but we pay the price for this today. it is 31 degrees at 11:45am, and quite windy. The guys washed the decks today in front of our office, and 10min later they were covered in a sheet of ice. good day to take off from the bike. i am really looking forward to riding in the warmth of Boulder on Sunday.
Alina is crawling all around now. Pretty fun for her. And she can even pull herself up to the edge of the couch, and she can stand up and hold on to the edge of the crib too. so we lowered her mattress to make sure she stays in her crib! She seems to enjoy her newfound freedom. As soon as you put her down she starts to scoot away!

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At work

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Warm at the peninsula !

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Mmm...good coffee

mobile photo-blogging!

this is going to be pretty cool to play with, esp. out on bike rides in the middle of nowhere...assuming I have a signal!

dusting

of new snow overnight. not cold enough to stick to the roads, which is nice. blue sky up high and sun trying to poke through, which is also nice. hopefully the dirt doesn't get too wet, as I am really looking forward to a mtb ride tomorrow.
Helen was going to do the Collegiate Peaks 50 today, but Alina was up most of the night with some teething issues. Not getting nearly enough sleep, she decided to bag the race. Tough decision for her, but way better for her in the long run. A 50-mile race would be brutal on 12 hours of sleep, let alone 1! Mary came up anyway to see Alina, so hopefully Helen can get some rest and/or go for a run.

snow, and sun

little bit of everything today when it comes to the weather. kinda weird in that it seems almost like a mid-summer, monsoonal pattern. the mornings are nice, then after lunch the clouds clamp down and we see snow. luckily I got out on the bike around 9:45 and did a nice ride down to Frisco with Tim. came back up through town and up Moonstone for a very cool, all downhill descent back to the office. probably 3 mi of high-speed warm down to get me back into work. and now that it's early May, not a whole lot is going on in town. It was cool to roll down Main St not fearing for my life b/c of traffic.

thunder

cool, it is super dark outside, and I just heard thunder in Breck for the first time since prob last Sep/Oct. The only question is, will we get any rain? or will it mostly fall as snow? Snow level is supposed to be at about 10,500', so we might get some rain. A nice gully-washing deluge would be perfect to clean up our dusty town now.

back to work...

well after a nice break I am right back at work. this time of year is great though. lots of quiet office time to work on our off-season projects. the weather has been crap, but what do you expect up here in May sometimes? Helen has the spring time blues now, but she hasn't had a chance to go somewhere warm and relax yet. A few nights a week she sleeps well when Alina doesn't wake often, but most of the nights lately she has been up 4-5x a night. Her motivation for running seems to be up and down, but I think that will improve once we get a few days of nice weather.

moab

i enjoyed (thanks Helen!) 4 days in the hot desert riding my bike last week. Left Wednesday am for Moab and was on the road with Pat pretty early. The only disappointment was that our traditional Glenwood Springs breakfast joint, The Daily Bread, was closed for remodeling. So we went next door to a coffee shop, which had great joe, but terrible food. Oh well. we were too excited to have that put a damper on the trip. we rolled into Moab just after lunch time, and checked into our "cabin" for a couple nights. Soon we were slapping on a lot of spf 30 and heading out south on 191 to get to the Hidden Valley trailhead. Connecting to Moab Rim made for an epic 20 miles on our first ride. The next day we took a shuttle up to the Kokopelli for the UPS to Porcupine Rim. An amazing ride through the La Sal mtn loop road brought us up there, to start about 20 mi of mostly downhill. Friday we rode the Sovereign Trail for about 3.5hrs. I forgot how techy that stuff is, and how crowded it can get out there. We then left Moab Friday eve and drove out to Fruita for the night. Saturday we rode Rustler's Loop and Horsethief Bench, which were awesome. Compared to the bone-jarring trails in Moab, these felt like the bike path. Almost 80mi offroad out there should help me ease out of my base period and into some interval training to prep for Chile Challenge in NM in a few weeks.

also from last week...

the county plowed most of the path between Breck and Frisco a couple of weeks ago. I think it is now even plowed all the way to Copper. Hopefully I will find that out tonight. Last week I did a couple of easy days on the path before getting beat up on the techy trails out in Moab. I've also really been enjoying taking Alina to swim lessons. We haven't full-on dunked her in the pool yet, but she really seems to like the water so far.

 
 
 
  

Helen's first race back...

i haven't worked too much in the last 10 days. pretty sweet. On April 22nd, Helen had her first ultra after having Alina. a tough desert 50-mile course near the Kokopelli trail outside of Fruita. It was in the mid 80s, which was the hardest part for Helen. Otherwise she did great. Alina had a long day, but was otherwise very happy. She loved the hotel, almost as much as when Helen stopped at 25mi to nurse Alina!