Tag Archives for " Mountain Biking "

0 Treadmill Challenge, Leadville training, and a new bike

Abbey custom steel 29er at the Gnome Shrine at Elv trail.

Last week was a good week of training, in all aspects. My new baby son is challenging my wife and I in the middle of the night. At least once or twice a week I’m hitting 4 or less hours of sleep. Not the best for recovery, but good for sleep deprivation training. And we all know how much you need that in a 100 miler. So, I just chalk it up to Leadville training (even though I whine about it from time to time). 🙂

Last week had a stellar 3-day block of training that started on Thursday afternoon with a 20 miler at Tumalo Falls with some good hill training and snow running while exploring snow levels in the high country. Next morning, I jammed out a awesome ride on my new Abbey custom steel 29er mountain bike (pictured) for 37 miles and almost three and a half hour ride. In the evening, I capped off my Friday with a 4-mile warm up running with Sean finished with the two of us going head to head in FootZone’s Treadmill Challenge put together by Max King. 10 minutes on a treadmill at 10% grade. I just edged out Meissner for the bout win. Finally, to top off my 3-day block, I got up at dawn Saturday morning and did a bike-run-bike workout by riding my cross commuter to the trailhead, running a hilly 14.5 miler with a summit of Lava Butte and Green Mountain for a stellar block of training topped off with little sleep (thanks Abe).

Hitting another big week this week and training right through SOB 50k this weekend in Ashland. Giddyup!

4 Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

Fresh cat tracks on Tumalo Creek Trail this morning.

I headed out for a dawn patrol mountain bike ride to ride part of the High Cascade 100 course coming up next Sunday. It was CHILLY this morning. 34 degrees when I hit the trail at 6:45am. BAM! The first brisk morning ride of the pending fall and I didn’t bring my good, warm gloves. My numb hands quickly reminded me that wind chill factor on a bike is for real. Fall comes early for dawn patrol workouts in the high desert.

I started at Swampy Lakes trailhead and jammed Swede Ridge and then down to Tumalo Creek trail. At the intersection I came across the big ‘ole cat tracks pictured above. 4 inches across and fresh over the top of all the bike tracks from yesterday. A good reminder that we’re not alone out there. It’s either a Lynx or Cougar. My son, Benjamin and I got out his Animal Tracks book and narrowed down the tracks from the photo to those two possibilities.

I’ve seen cat tracks a few times running and riding and every time I see them again after the memory cools from the last sighting, I’m reminded how freakin’ big those suckers are. Dang those tracks are big. I occasionally see a big dog’s on the trail and stop and check them out and realize they’re just a dog. But, when you actually come across a cat track and put your hand up to a track and it’s as big or bigger—cat, no mistake.

Be safe out there y’all—runnin’ with the kitties.

0 Test of Endurance 50 Mile Mountain Bike Race

Finished and ready for a hose-down. Benjamin thought I was PRETTY muddy.

50 miles done and glad to be standing upright.

My first MTB race in 12 years and it was a blast. Muddy and more muddy. I’ve been on my bike a lot this spring because of an injury that has kept me from running full time and so I decided to enter some races. I entered High Cascade 100 MTB race in August, but felt like I needed a “refresher” course in racing my mountain bike again. Bart Bowen at Rebound Sports Performance put the bug in my ear about TOE 50 held in the Coastal Range 25 miles west of Corvallis, Oregon. It’s a combo of singletrack and doubletrack logging roads. Most of the climbs are double track logging roads with most of the descents being singletrack.

I didn’t know what category to enter, as I haven’t raced in over a decade. I was on the fence on whether to enter Cat 1 or Cat 2. So, after consulting with a few mountain bike racers in town, I entered Cat 2. So, after not much warming up and a small drizzle at the start, we rolled out at 9am down a gravel road.

One thing I immediately remembered (albeit too late) about a bike race is to position yourself in the start pack strategically. I made the mistake of starting in the back half of the pack and got caught behind a bunch of slower folks early (and guys doinking their gear shifting on the first climb) and had to do a lot of surging the first half hour to get into a good position where I could settle into a comfortable pace. Exactly why I entered…refresher course.

I ended up riding near a few Pros and lots of Cat 1 riders all day and was wondering if I might be leading Cat 2, but wasn’t sure. I asked a couple of guys and they said there might be one Cat 2 guy ahead of me. I kept looking for him. Turns out there wasn’t. I crossed the finish 26 minutes in front of 2nd place Cat 2. Turns out I did better than anticipated and would have been only 1 minute off a podium finish in my age group for Cat 1 and 9th overall in Cat 1. Actually, to their credit, Bart Bowen and Paul Clarke told me I should probably enter Cat 1 due to fitness level, but my lack of racing was the question mark, which they turned out to be right. I had no idea though, due to my long hiatus from the sport, and took the conservative approach.

All in all, it was a blast. My son was a big help with filling gel flasks at the campsite the night before and was super pumped that Adam Craig showed up and got to stand next to him as we chatted after the race. He thinks it’s a cool fact that both Adam and Chris (Horner) live in the same town as he does.

Giddyup!

1 Duathlon Ride & a Broken Frame

The shocked laughing “Oh man, I can’t believe I broke my frame” moment. Note the hairline on the lower swingarm, 2 inches in front of the back drop out.

Today was an interesting day. I went off to meet Paul Clark at Phil’s trailhead, as we were going to ride a 40 mile mountain bike loop. We took off and were chatting as we cruised up Ben’s Trail to the double track that takes you to the top of whoops. Plan was to go down Skyliner Trail up Swede Ridge, down South Fork and up Farewell Trail and catch Mrazek back to down. We arrived at the top of Whoops and took a break to stretch.

There is a funky log bench there and you can ride it and hop on it. Well, before stretching, I started to hop up on the bench (got to try to keep my trials skills in action). I heard a creak which either sounded like my bottom bracket or my chain slapping my chainstay. I even said something about the sound to Paul.

Anyway, not thinking to deeply about it, we stretched, then started to cruise down Skyliner trail. I was leading and the curves felt squirrely and my break was rubbing. I stopped and said to Paul, “I think my back brake pads are dragging.” Paul is a bike mechanic at Bend Bike N Sport and also works for Bart Bowen at Rebound Sports Performance, and he hops off his bike and then exclaims, “Your frame is cracked!” Sure enough, the lower swing arm on the disc brake side of my bike, about 2 inches in front of the dropout, was broken in two. We wiggled it and it appeared to have some carbon fiber strands still attached. Maybe I could gingerly ride it out??!!

The broken lower swing arm. Bummer dude.

We unhooked the back brake, took out the pads and slid up the brake pad housing and re-tightened to get it away from the rotor. So, I only had a front brake to use. Since we were only 1/4 of the way into our ride, I urged Paul to continue his ride, as there wasn’t much he could do.

So, I began the slow ride down going really easy. Within 3/4 of mile the frame was completely separated. So, I got off and ran the remaining 2.2 miles with my bike down to Skyliner Trailhead to see if I could flag a ride back to my car. To top it off, I start getting pelted with hail! Then heavy thunder, puddles running down the trail. But thankfully, the storm passed quickly.

When I arrived at the trailhead, only 3 empty cars were there. So, I continued jogging my bike down Skyliner Road to get to my car. About a mile or two down the road, I watched 3 teenage punks drive by laughing, then back by going back toward town, laughing again and pointing. Thanks for the lift dorks! When I was in high school, I had enough manners to stop and ask someone if they needed help. I don’t mean to sound old, but what are parents doing today…not training up a child, that’s for sure. No respect for adults. Sad. But I digress…

I continued jogging…and let me say SPD shoes are not made for jogging very long in! I was nearing 6 miles running with my bike, when I got to FS Rd 300 and a nice older couple from Washington, who own a 2nd home in Bend, were loading up their mini van with one bike and had an extra slot on their rack. Sure enough, they kindly gave me a lift to my car the final 5 miles to Phil’s trailhead.

I took the bike straight to Bend Bike N Sport and Sean left a message with the Scott Rep. I hope Scott will step up to the plate and get me the replacement swing arm this week so I’ll be ready to race at TOE 50 next Sunday. We’ll see. Otherwise, I may be riding my singlespeed hardtail for 50 miles. Giddyup!

4 Fresh Veggies and 65 miles in the saddle

Halfway up the climb on Farewell trail above Tumalo Falls (Broken Top in the background).

Tomorrow is 2 weeks out from TOE 50 Mile MTB race. So, I thought I should go do a really long ride on Friday. I got up early and ended up spending nearly 6 hours in the saddle—64.8 miles with only 12 miles paved…10 miles double track…the rest sweet Central Oregon singletrack. We just got 3 days of rain, some of which was pretty hard. The trails were primo. Tacky, hard packed.

What a stellar ride. It was my first time up to Swede Ridge this season (only a handful of small snow piles left), down South Fork and up Farewell to Mrazek and back to town. The weather was in the 70s and sunny. Perfect. I felt pretty good all day. Ran out of water about 20 minutes from town, stopped into FootZone, refilled, downed two gels, grabbed a turkey wrap from Strictly Organic drive-thru and pedaled home for the 8-mile cooldown to my house. What’s that have to do with veggies? Recovery.

Well, my recovery meal today consisted of my own home-grown veggies out of the garden, first harvest of the season. The kids and I harvested fresh spinach and radishes from the garden this evening.

Side Note: After fighting my first really large outside garden last season and losing a bunch of stuff to our climate’s anytime-frost-potential, I decided early this year to invest in a 12’x 20′ commercial hoop house for my garden. It has 8-4’x 4′ raised beds, utilizing the highly-intensive square foot gardening method. It’s been awesome (picture below). If you’ve never grown a garden, I highly recommend this method and start with one 4’x 4′ raised bed—easy and low-maintenance.

We had organic steak on the grill, fresh home-grown organic spinach salad with fresh broccoli, mung bean, lentil, and alfalfa sprouts on the top (my wife has really got into sprouting stuff lately). If you haven’t tried sprouting, you should try it. Great article in Mother Earth News on sprouting.

It’s a great way to add some serious nutritional variety to salads, as sprouts are highly digestible and once something sprouts, the nutritional value goes through the roof. Sprouts also contain an abundance of highly active antioxidants that prevent DNA destruction and protect us from free radicals. If you’re an endurance athlete…that means you recover faster…better than some highly processed powder concoction. Money, y’all.

And, as any of you out there that grow a garden…there is nothing mo’betta than eating something 5 minutes after its cut. Mmmm, it was tasty and I had two large salads. Giddyup!

View into my greenhouse (the only way to grow properly in Central Oregon’s 61-day growing season). We live at almost 4,000 feet, lots of cold nights. So, most of my veggies are in here. The cat loves the “micro-climate” of the greenhouse, she hangs in here a lot. The spinach (after cutting a bowl full), is the largest green patch on the far right of the frame. I have 16+ varieties of veggies growing in there right now. I also grow squash, zucchini, and wax bean outside in another garden area…but those are cold tolerant and do okay outside in our climate.