getting lost and breaking bikes

After a day off and a quick spin on the new singlespeed on tuesday I got back to some solid riding yesterday. The plan was to start at the Sourdough Trailhead near the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station. Instead of riding my normal route on the sourdough north towards Brainard Lake and Camp Dick I headed Northwest up to the Niwot Ridge Trail, the goal, ride up and over Niwot Ridge (the highest trail in the immediate front range of Boulder) and then drop down and back via the Sourdough. After climbing for nearly 1.5 hours the retention spring in my brake broke and started sticking into my rotor making an awful sound.

I hopped off the bike at somewhere near 12,000 ft above sea level with no tree cover and clouds rolling in. Pulled the front wheel and pulled the brake pads out with the hope to mend the retention spring. Sadly it wasn't to be. After sitting there for a considerably amount of time and getting very cold (I eventually put on a fleece jersey, leg warmers, and a hat) I figured it would probably make more sense to keep going and come back on sourdough still as this would be less continuous steep descending without a front brake.

Turns out I missed the turn and ended up at the top of some mountain by a research building for CU. Ah well, guess I have to try and flow my way down the mountain with only a rear brake.

Overall the descent for the first bit wasn't that bad as the alpine tundra covered in Granite does not lend to a huge amount of speed. Then, the fast fire road came. It is seriously scary trying to descend steep, fast, and loose fire roads without a speed control mechanism and only a bike control mechanism. In the end I definitely wimped out and walked a few of the steeper pitches in order to avoid barrelling over the side of the trail into the creek beds.

Overall it was a sweet ride to get up so high in altitude and work on pushing the pedals without much oxygen especially over technical terrain.

Till next time.

The First Yeti Build

Yesterday at 2:30 in the afternoon I pulled into 600 Corporate Circle, Golden, CO 80401 - the home of Yeti Cycles. After speaking with Bubba for a few moments I spent the next couple of minutes ogling the history of Yeti Cycles hanging in the lobby. Yeti has always made amazing bikes and in my opinion always will from their Downhill rock eaters to their stiff and compliant aluminum hard tails.

My new Yeti A.R.C. frame was handed off and I booked it back to Longmont for a headset install and then home for an afternoon of building. But first I weighed it with our sweet scale from Feedback Sports, a slight 3.76 lbs. This is not quite the uber light carbon fiber hard tail that many cross country racers ride, however, I have gone that route and have found that maybe it isn't the best.

Here are some pics from the build process:

Here is the weight with headset of the frame I replaced with the A.R.C.
And now the A.R.C. weight!Checkout the amazing attention to detail with a stamped Yeti on the replaceable derailleur hanger!


Though the weight is not quite what many racers are riding or even close to what I started my season out on, however, with some new components (handlebars, crankset, brakes, cassette) I can easily have it down to 21 or 22. Just need some time.

I still have not been able to set up my new set of Power Cordz as I am waiting for my trusted teammate to give me a hand on this process, since he has had experience doing it on his bike. Stay tuned for a ride report and race report as I break in this turquoise and white beauty.

Squirt Lube Skinsuits

We received skinsuits from Squirt Lube a while ago (just after Crested Butte). I'd never worn a skinsuit, so I had to try it on and take some pictures. What do you think? They're pretty sweet, huh?????


We've also been working on our OWN kits! Finally. They should be pretty sweet, but I don't want to give away too many details because we want to surprise everyone when we finally get to wear them. Many thanks to Dave Griebling (our Rooly guy) and Pioneer S&M for helping us get the kits going and for having such a good turn-around time (just over 2 weeks).
That's all for now, just getting ready for National Championships so I can get my auto-qualification for World Championships. Wish me luck!

Yeti

We're proud to introduce our newest sponsor: Yeti Cycles!
We are planning to get our frames soon, so look for us to be riding the Yeti ARC in the very near future.

If you've never checked out Yeti's bikes, give then a good look. They have some really cool technologies (notice the rear triangle of the ARC above) and you can't help but ogle the Carbon ASR (check out the integrated seat post).
More updates soon!

Putting in the Miles

Last week was my final week of serious training before the 2009 US Mountain Bike National Championships. This meant a huge week of time on the bike and lots of painful intervals, but also some good fun.

Between my race last weekend and then along endurance ride I was ready for some rest time. Monday was a day to sit around and let my body except the punishment I gave it over the weekend while recovering for the week of training.

Tuesday - Hill attacks. This means find a short hill and sprint up it for 30 seconds recover for a minute. Rinse Repeat. I did 3 sets of 4 attacks with 5 minutes of recovery between each set of 4. Legs felt awesome, though my bike was feeling weird as I put my narrow flat bars back on in order to fix many fit issues I was having, the first and foremost was my cockpit length and the only shorter stem I had was not the same size as my riser bars (ugh!)

Wednesday - Climbing Repeats with Hill attacks every 2 minutes. These hurt. All you do is go long and hard with even harder efforts throughout. To make matters worse these workouts always come with a total time of 3 hours at a minimum, I did 4.

Thursday - Endurance Ride. In order to prepare for nationals at my best I took the 2.5 hour trek up to Sol Vista Ski Basin to ride a few easy laps on the Nationals Course. All I can say is: Sol Vista you guys need to get your act together. Though I haven't seen the DH course or Super D course the XC course is rather sad and not worthy of being the course that determines the American National Champions. The climb is all well and good but as soon as you reach the descent you essentially ride down a "trail" that is marked out and has been ridden but not actually built like a real trail ought to be. To make matters slightly worse half way down the descent there is a short power climb that is over a section of the mountain that has been clear cut and then the trees were sent through a chipper. You ride over these wood chips with no way of understanding where the course is. Finally, near the top of the course there is a section of trail that IMBA would cry at. It shoots straight down the side of the mountain without a sign of even thinking about sustainability. Nor is it actually built. Imagine grabbing your mountain bike and then just riding down the side of a hill straight, hmmmm.....

Friday - Recovery. I needed some good recovery after those past 3 days to get ready for a big weekend.

Saturday - More Climbing Repeats with hill attacks. Went back out for the same workout as wednesday and did not feel it. Did my first interval and after not being able to get my heart rate up to where it needed to be consistently I bailed on the workout. Sometimes it is better to just ride and recover than really over do it.

Sunday - Another Endurance ride. With the plan being to head to Winter Park again this coming weekend for another Winter Park Series race I thought let's go to Winter Park ride some epic trails and check out the course. After talking to the guys at the Trestle Bike Park Shop about the area a little bit I suited up and headed out. All I can say is the mountain biking in Winter Park is truly epic. Amazingly built trails that are so much fun to ride. I smiled for 4 hours and never got tired.

Now it is time to taper off and let my body really get the best out of that last week while keeping the engine finely tuned with some short hard efforts this week and a race this weekend.

Hope to see you out there in Winter Park enjoying the epicness that is the Fraser Valley in Grand County, CO.

Building the Form Back Up

After my mental recovery week I thought it was high time to get back to actual bike practices and give the whole serious training thing a shot again with the hope of not being completely destroyed by the time Nationals rolls around in 3 weeks.

In my hopes of building form back I did what has been on of the most successful training rides of my career as a cyclist based on my results the past couple of years: long and hard. When I say "long and hard" I don't mean I go out and hammer for 5 hours at a harsh 165+ average heart rate. No, no, no.... That means I spend about 2 hours riding at a fun and consistent endurance pace and then light it up for a solid hour of intervals and then spend the next 2 hours back in the endurance zone.

By the time I got off work in the morning and made my way home I was on the bike by about 12:30 in the afternoon. The skies were looking good and I was pedaling a pretty good pace towards Boulder Canyon from Longmont (a solid 1.5-2 hour ride at Endurance pace depending on the direction of the wind). During this first part of the ride I was feeling pretty good but definitely noticed that it was really hot, I'm talking in the 90's and there are no groves of trees to protect you out on the plains, so I was baking pretty good.

I reached Boulder Canyon and almost immediately started out my first 15 minute interval with 30 second attacks every 2 minutes. "Man I am feeling good, heart rate is controllable, it is in the right place, and I can really ramp it up during those attacks, 200 here I come" were my thoughts. After finishing the first interval I dropped into a seriously easy gear for Boulder Canyon and recovered for a bit till I reached Magnolia road and then put my bike in the granny gear for the first time in God only knows how long so I could continue my recovery process.

Next interval showed up and after about five minutes of suffering up one of the steepest climbs in the world (I swear this hill is nuts!) I started to notice that I was not feeling so hot. My stomach wasn't happy, I wasn't able to control my bike, or even really keep my heart rate down in my climbing zones. Then I realized, uh-oh, my old nemesis has returned: heat exhaustion.

Last year I had two weekends in a row where I battled heat exhaustion in the middle of the summer and after those two events I very quickly learned that one does not continue on when feeling like this. Didn't finish my second interval and it was time to go home. Instead of doing my planned ride all the way to Nederland and then wandering on dirt roads and trails back towards Left Hand Canyon and finally home I just booked it down Magnolia road and went home the way I came at a comfortable and sustainable pace considering how I was feeling.

4 hours 45 minutes later I had covered 60 miles (almost a metric century!) and burned about 4,000 calories.

Now time to recover...

This weekend Transparent Racing will be up at the Winter Park Series Race #2 - The XC Super Loop, so if you are from Colorado and enjoy epic mountain biking at it's best come on up, say hi, and rip some of the best trails in Colorado.

Here are some photo's from last weeks exploits for your viewing pleasure:


See you out there.

Back to Basics

After a hard weekend both mentally and physically I decided I really needed a mental break from living life as a professional mountain bike racer.

Colorado Springs greeted me with a bruised up left side of the body and the possibility of cracked ribs (Shannon, my fiancee, keeps telling me this. I refuse to believe her) as well as a cracked carbon mountain bike. After spending my sunday rebuilding up my old aluminum hard tail from the winter I finally got back out for a ride again on Monday and did something I haven't done for awhile, I just rode. The heart rate monitor though present was not on the handlebars for the first time on a training ride in over 3 years and I didn't look at it at all except to hit start and stop at the beginning and end of my ride.

This view of training has been following me all week. Tuesday I went out for a bit longer than the 45 minutes the day before and did one of the best loops from my house out to Heil Ranch and home through Lyons, solid 3 hours at a comfortable pace. Wednesday I didn't have the mojo to ride, so I didn't! Then by Thursday I suited up a for a quick morning spin into Lyons and up to Hall Ranch. By the time I got to the Antelope trail I was feeling pretty antsy and pinned it all the way to the top, man that felt good to just hammer on some dirt.

Well after getting in a sweet 32 mile ride at Hall I had to take a super fast shower and then get ready for a weekend down at Sea Level. This past weekend while Macky was killing it at Crested Butte I was living the life down in Houston, TX.

As a mountain bike racer/rider one would think that my options for actual singletrack would be quite limited in Houston, wrong! At both Memorial Park and Terry-Hershey Park (both a 25-30 minute road spin from where I stay) there is some sweet true singletrack unlike any I have ever experienced. The trails are tight, twisty, rooty, and above all a blast to just put in the big ring and hammer. It felt so good to spend the weekend not worrying about what intervals I should be doing and just enjoying riding my bike again, something that I think will benefit the rest of my season exceptionally well.

Next up, Winter Park Series number 2 this weekend on the XC Super Loop, can't wait!

Hunting...

I went hunting today on my hour recovery ride for the little spring that holds AVID disc brake pads apart. Thanks to John Dawson at SRAM, I got a few sets of pads, but when I tried to install them on my Giant Anthem today I realized that I didn't have the spring I needed. So, I rode without a front brake (I've done this quite a few times recently) and went by all 2 bike shops in Taos looking for the spring. At Taos Cyclery, they couldn't find a used one for me because Doug, the owner, wasn't there. And Gearing Up was closed. So I rode without a front brake and just played around easy.

A few other things to note:
We received our first shipment of Grease Monkey Wipes today. Thanks guys! I can't wait to go out and get dirty so I can try them out...
We also received a stand, truing stand, scale, and tool tray from Feedback Sports. Can't wait to try them out as well (and get an accurate reading on how much my bike weighs)!

Swimming in patch kits

I had a really funny thing happen to me yesterday. I received 2 large boxes from Genuine Innovations. That in itself wasn't all the surprising, but the contents were not quite what I was expecting...
According to the packing slip and my order, I was supposed to receive 1 Legend Pump and 20 BigAirs. Although I did receive the pump, instead of 20 BigAirs, I found 20 BOXES of patch kits. Each box had 36 patch kits, so I received 1 pump and 720 patch kits!
While I have flatted many times, I'm not sure if I have flatted quite THAT many times, so I was a bit confused. Eventually, I figured out that whoever had packed the boxes had simply misread the order and had read "boxes of patch kits" instead of "BigAirs". It was hilarious, so I decided to document it:

I let the guys at Genuine Innovations know, and FedEx is coming to pick up the patch kits tomorrow, but man, it really made my day!

Back to Training

After returning home from the Angel Fire Mountain States Cup at the end of May I knew I had a solid 2 weeks to get prepared for my next high altitude adventure, the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO. This meant lots of big hours and hard intervals over the past week and this week some resting with some short efforts to keep the legs fresh.

On most of my training rides I end up heading up towards Ward, CO in some form or fashion. Ward is a popular destination for the Boulder cycling community as it sits atop a solid 16 mile climb from the base of the Foothills. Living with a fairly close proximity to Left Hand Canyon (the route to Ward) I often spend my time riding in that general direction during training rides. Fortunately for me there are a number of four wheel drive roads and trails that enter and exit through Left Hand Canyon and James Creek Canyon adding to much excitement in my everyday training routine.

One of my more recent discovery's was Rowena Road. I've often noticed it on my map of the area and seen it quite often on my way up the canyon but never really took much note of it as I was not sure what it was (it's not posted on the road). Recently I took a venture and explored a little, discovering what is more of a trail than a road that takes you from Left Hand Canyon Drive to Sunshine Canyon Drive, what a great connecting route for all kinds of mountain exploring in the Boulder foothills!

In addition to using Rowena Rd often to traverse the mountains I have also begun to move higher into the mountains again, as the snow is quickly melting out of the high country, and start riding trails like the James Creek Trail. This trail is pretty much awesome. There is very little traffic on it so it is peaceful and winds it's way up the James Creek Canyon all the way to Gold Lake Resort. There are 2 solid hike a bike sections, one where the creek has invaded the trail and the other where the trail crosses the creek, however, they are absolutely worth it if one considers the connection they make. Once reaching Gold Lake you are only a few miles away from the Peak to Peak highway right above Ward, meaning you are only a few miles away from the Sourdough Trail, Brainard Lake Trails, Switzerland Trail, many dirt road connections to the trails in Nederland, and other trail connections to trails North of Ward. Hours of epic fun.

I am still waiting for the whole of the Sourdough Trail to melt out as much of it is above 10,000 ft and in the trees making for a long and slow thaw process, but once it does, the high country epic rides must continue.

Here are some photos so you may see some of the riding I have been doing lately:


The view down Rowena Rd about half way up:
My bike relaxing on a tree with some new riser bars. Loving the added width:

Alabama, here I come!

Fortunately, my trip to Alabama was NOT an adventure. I ran slightly late getting to the airport, but my bags and I made it onto the plane and I was able to take advantage of the NOT ANCIENT battery in my new MacBook Pro and get some work done while flying. I took a brief nap in Dallas and then used my computer again to continue learning PHP until I landed in Alabama.
Unfortunately, when I landed I found out that Seamus Powell, a friend who I was planning to share hotel costs with, had decided not to come because of multiple delays at the Albany airport. Not only was I hoping to get to hang out with him, but now I have to figure out how to pay for a hotel room that was supposed to be split by 3 people (Kat also couldn't come because of finances). Oh well, I guess now I don't have to share my king sized bed and pull out couch.

The huge hotel room that I have all to myself...

In Alabama, I ran into Georgia Gould and Lea Davison in the airport, chatted for a bit, then set about getting to my hotel. Here is where things got less easy. First of all, the taxi driver I spoke to estimated that the trip to my hotel would be about $50. Not only was that expensive, but the hotel website had quoted the trip at about $35...I wasn't real happy, to say the least. I spoke to him for a bit, asked about alternate modes or transportation, and finally, he offered to take me for 20% off what the total came to. I accepted and made it to the Hampton in Pelham for $41.
For dinner I headed to "Krystal", a fast food restaurant 100 yards from the hotel, because I wanted something cheap and didn't want to deal with the crowds at the "Margarita Grill", another restaurant 100 yards away that had live music and tons of people. Here's a shot of my tasty dinner (kinda):

Now I'm off to bed so that I'm rested for pre-riding the course tomorrow!

Photo Update

So I promised some photos from my second dumb epic of the year and here they are:

A view of the mountains as we finally were making it back to the car, getting dark, uh oh!


Me hiking my way up the Colorado Trail. We eventually put our leg warmers on for protection. Builds Character!
While the Singletrack was still Colorado Epic, so much fun!

It continues to be beautiful and fun. This section was super sick and fast coming down!
From the top of our first climb.

Now it is time to prepare for the Teva Mountain Games in two weeks where the racing is going to be epic in the high country of Colorado, can't wait.

WEAR YOUR HELMET!

This is a frustration and thought I have had lingering for a very long time. Particularly in the world of professional cycling we often see racers out training without their helmets on. This is never the case during competition due to strict rules by the various governing bodies, but very often out of competition this is the case.

In Spain there is a law requiring all cyclists to wear a helmet, punishable by fine, except for professional racers. So if you can show that you are a professional racer once you've been pulled over for not wearing a helmet (e.g. ride around with your racing license in your pocket) then you are fine. Doesn't it seem a little ridiculous that you would take the time to not only explain to the police officer that you are a professional cyclist, but also to carry your racing license around while training rather than putting on a helmet and not even having to think about it??

There are millions of reasons to wear a helmet no matter what kind of riding you are doing, cruising along the boardwalk, out on an epic 100 mile training ride, or just goofing off in the parking lot with some friends.

The most forthcoming reason not to, heat, is actually a false one. Yes, it might feel cooler to be cruising without a helmet on on a hot day, it actually isn't. Helmet technology is well beyond the years of those leather hat like things that would clearly make one sweat and warm up profusely. They are well vented, designed to handle hot days and sweat. Just think as you watch the Tour de France as the climb up the Alps or the Pyrenees, they are all wearing their helmets and it doesn't seemed to have effected the sport that much in the end, now has it!?!

I implore all cyclists out there to wear their helmets! It could save your life! It is worth every second you put it on your head.

Bike Pure

I ran across an interesting website yesterday called Bike Pure. After looking around a little, I realized that Bike Pure is working to promote the same ideals that Transparent Racing is, and wanted to share a bit about the organization.

According to Bike Pure's website,

Bike Pure aims to protect the integrity of cycling and promote clean cyclesport. Cycling fans worldwide deserve heroes they can believe in. Supporters want a clean sport and the professional riders need their credibility back.

This is something that we at Transparent Racing STRONGLY agree with. We believe that cycling is a wonderful sport that should not be marred by illegal performance enhancers and that cyclists of all disciplines are losing credibility because of the bad choices of some racers.

One of Transparent Racing's goals is to have great results WITHOUT using performance enhancers. We believe that if a racer or rider cannot enjoy cycling without cheating, then they should not be cycling. We also seek to build trust with cycling fans around the world by being open, honest and accessible. When our team website goes live, we will be posting our training and racing data online, as well as the results from our anti-doping tests to prove to the world that we are a clean race team.

Another interesting aspect of Bike Pure is how they plan to bring about this positive change in cycling. Here is what they have to say:

Through media pressure and rider and fan support Bike Pure shall encourage the athletes and teams to sign an 'Honour Code’, declaring that they race clean, without performance enhancing drugs and with a pledge that will encourage our sport to flourish. If any rider should be deemed positive, Bike Pure encourages the introduction of a life ban from cycle sport and move forward, forgetting the doper and focusing the media attention on passion and results.

We believe it is only through the adoption of stiffer penalties that riders will think twice about doping. Riders are held responsible for their own behaviour, their sponsors can have faith that their investment is safe, and the public can have confidence in the results.

We are not naive to think this is a complete solution, but it is an important first element getting the clean riders to joining forces with the supporters and laying a foundation for the future.

So far, many well-known cyclists (mountain, cyclocross and road) have taken Bike Pure's pledge, including racers from Garmin-Slipstream, Jelly Belly Pro Cycling Team, Specialized MTB, Subaru-Gary Fisher, Spike, and Velo Bella, just to name a few.

Transparent Racing is proud to have taken the Bike Pure pledge, and will be racing and training with Bike Pure's wristband and headset spacer. Look for the blue and join us. Working together, we can return cycling to it's true form...PURE sport. (If you are interested in seeing the pledge that each Bike Pure pledger must sign, click here)