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.