one of the last singletrack rides in Breck

snapped this on Tuesday after work, right as some flurries were coming down. with today's storm pushed further to the east, I don't think it will affect the mountains, so I could still be riding singletrack in Breck early next week. Wow, that'd be cool. Singletrack in Breckenridge.

back at it again

today I was lucky to get out for about 45min on the road machine. Jared and Tim would laugh, but that was probably the 20th ride or so on the road bike since June. just doesn't get mileage when the mtb is so much more fun. easy spin on the path, and around through town. The Chorus grouppo still works beautifully. It is hard to believe how much crisper the shifting is on the road bike than the cross bike. Soon after I got home I ran out on the mountain bike for about 45min of singletrack. Yes, singletrack in Breckenridge in late October. Hard to imagine, but it's true. The lower mile of both the Lower and Upper Flume trails is dry enough to ride. Sure felt great to be back on singletrack in my backyard. Just how I opened up the Breck singletrack season on the Flumes in May, I am closing the town riding season down with a spin on my stock run trails. I do hope to get out to Frisco one more time to ride the Nordic center trails.

these two pics below are some of my favorites. parts of the race that for some reason didn't feel like Hades.

 
 

cross race pics

my dad took a ton of photos from Sunday's suffering out at Boulder Rez. A lot of them came out nicely. Usually, my fan club consists only of Helen, Alina and Montana. Since Helen has her hands full with Alina and Montana at a cross race, she doesn't really have the time to try and shoot some pics. Thanks Dad!

Alina's party pic web album

this link to a Picasa web album has more photos of Alina's party. good times. hard to believe she is a toddler (or big kid, as she says), and not much of a baby.

some more pics from up at Bill & Mary's house

 
 
 
 

Boulder scenics

some nice color near Mapleton in Boulder. and looking southwest towards James Pk. from the Hill's house near the top of Sugarloaf.

 
 

great support at my last 'cross race at Boulder Rez

 
 
 
 

family photos

 
 
 

and of course carrot cake & ice cream

 
 
 

She likes the kitchen

 
 
 

2yrs old and pretty darn happy

 

whew

yeah, we had a great time this past weekend. Alina got to see her long-distance grandparents, went to another cyclocross race, and we had a great lunch at Bill & Mary's house on a beautiful day in Boulder.

the Boulder Reservoir was the venue for the Boulder Racing CX #3 on Sunday. Typical course, lots of sand, some pavement, some goatheads. Luckily I only flatted once, and it was while pre-riding. The trainer warm-up did me well, and the race itself unfolded reasonably well. I didn't clip in as soon as I'd like, so instead of 8-10, I was in about 15-20 after the first 200m. Soon we were entering what announcer Nat Ross called "kitty litter corner," as the loose gravel was a bit sketchy each lap. The dock section was tough, but short and sweet, nothing like the long 100+m run in the sand down by the big beach. And if I thought that was rough, things got even rougher as we descended back down to the beach, then rode along through loose wet sand, climbed up through some muddy sand, back through some gravel and onto pavement. I faded some about 30min in, but otherwise I maintained and didn't feel too bad about the race, until I saw I ended up somewhere around 15th place, and I was hoping for 10th or so. Oh well. My dad took plenty of great pictures. Between the race and Alina's birthday celebration, I need to find the time to upload some pics tonight.

Alina is 2!

Happy Birthday Alina! the best 2 years of my life thanks to you and Helen. we'll party all weekend.

mid-day ride

got out on the bike path for a late afternoon ride. as you can see the sun was shining. if you look closely you can see a few patches of snow. but it looks like a lot of the snow in town will melt again (one last time?) before the storms of next week come around.

Colorado Rockies and the online frenzy

as I type this, thousands of Rockies fans across the region are logged on to the Rockies' website, hoping to be one of the lucky people to get 1-4 of the 54,000 available tickets. funny stuff. no coincidence that our phones have almost entirely stopped ringing. gotta wonder how much Colorado office bandwidth & productivity are declining now.

This is what most people are seeing now on their browsers:

"Please wait for the server to become available. The site is experiencing heavy loads at this time.

To improve your ticket-buying experience and to make it as pleasant as possible, this site permits entry to a limited number of patrons at a time.

This page will refresh when the countdown timer below reaches zero. When this happens, the system will automatically try to access the site again.

Do not refresh this page or you will be dropped to the end of the line. Thank you for your patience."

Top half

Usually in the 35s, I am psyched to be in the top 1/3rd, or top 10, if possible. Well last Saturday at Interlocken, I got smoked. Tired legs and a brutal course made it next to impossible to achieve a results-based goal. Greg blogs that there were some lapped riders who got inadvertently lumped in the top 20, so now I moved up to 25th out of 55 finishers. Nothing to write home about (like anyone writes home these days), but it's slightly more palatable. I basically finished in the position I started, thanks to a crappy 3rd row line-up, bad legs, lots of power-sapping grass and little motivation. Let's hope the Rez goes better on Sunday. Weather as of today looks to be dry.

Saturday's race, and the face of ouch

Mark Woolcott has been shooting some cross racing photos for many of the races.

This link shows the look of uneasiness at the time. As does this one.

Alina's party at the Aquarium

Sunday's snow in Denver made us change the venue from the zoo to the aquarium. Even with the crummy weather, we were still lucky to have many of Alina's friends there: Logan, Ethan, Winston, Wyndham and Izaac. Alina had a great time and was really excited about all of the fish. She enjoyed showing Logan what she liked. After, we had some lunch and the waiter brought Alina some ice cream with 2 candles. She of course ate it all! Pics will be posted soon.

Interlocken

didn't go so well on Saturday. for some stupid reason I seem to always stay up til midnight the night before a race, then get maybe 6.5hrs sleep. Not enough. Legs felt like wood and never really improved. Decent start saw me in the top 15, but a couple of laps in I kinda popped and started to fade like I was dragging a boat anchor. 2-3 guys would pass me on every lap, and I was looking forward to seeing the "5 laps to go" sign at the finish line. The thick grass that makes many racers view Interlocken as a classic course...well it is not good for me, esp. with bad legs. Energy-sapping grass made me push an easier gear than I knew I needed to, but the course was difficult and didn't leave much room for recovery. The 75 yards of running - barrier, ride or run for 15yds, then volleyball court, then ride or run for 15yds to double barrier - was difficult after riding through the thick grass by Hwy 36. Perhaps next year I will skip this one and race the Red Rocks course. Hopefully I am getting the bad race over with, as next week my parents will be down to watch out at Boulder Rez, another course where I typically don't fare super well, with the beach ride/run-up, dock section, more sand, and crit-style pavement.

The day much improved as I left the venue soon after finishing, dropped off Alina with Mary at Chataqua Park, and Helen went for a run. I drove over the Flatirons to Walker Ranch for a mountain bike ride, knowing Sunday was going to be snowy. Great descents and steep climbs may not have been the ideal recovery ride, but my legs felt okay after about 1/2hr.

calm before the storm

This was at about 7:45a on the Apex Trail, just before the snowstorm moved in. It was about 35 degrees, but good riding conditions, for about 20 minutes. I rode back to Josh & Diana's house in a driving snow.

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gross template, cool cross video

yeah my customized blog template is corrupt, so I turned it off and switched to a much more generic one. It is plain jane, but I will spice it up in the near future.

Yesterday felt like December. Low of 20, high of 30, off and on snow all day. Pretty chilly, and I was too much of a wuss to ride outside. Today it looks nicer. Not super sunny, but dry and it was 29 at 6a, so it must be above freezing by now. Our yard has 6-10" of snow on it, and I am doubtful at this point if it will totally melt out again, esp. with some more snow on the way this Sunday.

Cool cross course out at Interlocken tomorrow morning. I haven't exactly had a great week of trainiing, but 3xs on the bike might be sufficient.

Neat video of a UCI 'cross race in Ohio last wknd, courtesy of Greg Keller.

i'm a baby

how do I know? b/c this winter weather makes me want to curl up in a ball and sob uncontrollably on the floor. actually, it isn't that bad, the snow is great for business. but it isn't great for me, yet. Maybe in early December when I get my first powder turns, things will be better. I just can't seem to have as much fun skiing or snowboarding as I do on my bike, ever. oh well. when I am rich, and Alina is in college, I will have a winter home in Arizona. that would be cool. and then I woke up from my dream. and it was 20 degrees, snowing sideways.

winter, I guess...

well, Saturday's awesome mountain bike ride may have been one of the last for all I know. we had about 12" of snow from Sat night until Sunday afternoon. Not even a day earlier I was riding dusty singletrack in the upper 50s to low 60s. the next day, I could have easily skied the same trails! No cross races for me this weekend. We'll see how wrecked my riding volume gets this week with the weather, esp. considering that they're calling for another 3-6" Wed night into Thurs. Race this Saturday in Boulder, can't wait for the deep fields, and Interlocken is an awesome course.

Alina loved the snow Sunday morning. We got her all dressed up in her snow pants, boots, jacket, hat....the whole set-up, and we were soon out the door. Our plastic sled didn't do so well in the thick, heavy wet snow on the street. We need to get her a real sled!

toe spikes

Thanks Greg for the cool video showing the slick and steep run-up at this cross race. Hopefully we'll get at least one good sloppy race for me to try mine out. Right now I gotta wacth where I walk until I get some shorter screws to protect the threads. Luckily, I have my old white Sidis that I am using for all mtb and cross rides except for race day.



Cyclocross Bike Racing Traffic Jam On Muddy Run-Up - video powered by Metacafe

nuts, and September

nuts, as in work is nuts. good busy, but busy. problem (not really) is that the weather has been so dang beautiful, I am forcing myself out to ride a lot. but this September weather in October isn't helping my production at work. oh well. gorgeous short lunch ride, behind the ice rink, looped up on Southside, then returned on the Blue River trail, then crossed Boreas Pass Rd and climbed up Jack's Cruel Joke to cross down to Carter Park back through town to the office. best part is that the warm sunshine and lack of wind felt more like Labor Day wknd than almost mid-October. Cross races this wknd are in Gunnison. Part of me wants to race, but a bigger part of me is fine staying at home to ride some high altitude singletrack for what will probably be my last weekend ride.

Friscocross day 2

better course, better legs and a bit better result. 9th place today. the snow forecasted never materialized, just some wind and cold temps. prob in the upper 30s race time, but it was comfortable nonetheless. I decided to back off a notch at the start today, and found myself with a good pace and some energy left in the tank late in the race. Good to be racing with these guys. Most of them are pretty classy, and fast with tons of experience. I will DEFINITELY get a top 5 this season.

some more shots from the weekend of racing:

me in the pain cave on Saturday, fading some...


a soft focus effect, courtesy of Picasa...


a racer int the Open (Pro) men's race on Sunday...


start of the Open men's race Sunday...


a sandy tech section...


Pro women's mtb'er Georgia Gould "girling" many of the guys!

LSU does it, knocks off Florida and defends their #1 ranking

what a night, I didn't have much to cheer about in the first half. In fact, I was so grumpy about it Helen went upstairs with Alina to watch it by themselves. I wouldn't even answer the phone when my friends were calling me giving me crap about LSU's losing (at the time). Well, it turned out great!

courtesy of lsusports.net:
"In arguably the most exciting game ever played in LSU’s storied Tiger Stadium in front of the largest crowd in its history, the No. 1-ranked LSU Tigers overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat ninth-ranked Florida, 28-24, in front of record 92,910 emotionally spent fans."

fun in Frisco

first pic is of Alina on the softball field watching my race. Alina already has a Tiger costume. Yesterday she was talking about Gators. Not very cool, considering at the time LSU was getting spanked by Florida. Luckily they overcame the Gators to take a great victory! Yesterday in Target, Alina told Helen she wanted to be a ladybug for Halloween, so there you have it!

Friscocross day 1

14th out of 27 finsihers. nothing to write home about (as if anyone writes home anymore!). Had a good start, bobbled on the first runup, couldn't clip into my pedal soon afterward, and next thing you know I lost about 7 positions in 10 secs. I was still sitting comfy around 10th, and then the true suffering began. I think I was at the very back of the front group, or second group, but never could seem to gain much more ground. Cool course though.

no title needed

after work biking

Alina sizing up the ramp...


look at that intense focus...

Alina was riding over this little ramp next door at Izaac's house.

after work walk

Helen's happy, not sure about Alina.


Alina looking for the moon, or an airplane, or a bird, or something.