I Ride, I Write

• Dropped the kids off at school
• Went for a mile swim at the pool
• participated in a teleconference with college football coaches
• went back to the gym with my kindergartner and hit a spin class — such a nice day outside, hate that I resorted to pedaling inside
• took my little dude to get his swin flu vaccine. Couldn’t get mine because I’m too old to qualify for the limited supply
• came home and did homework with the little dude and worked on a story for the paper
• ate too much junk food
• got the rest of the kids home from school and took them all to the clinic for regular flu shots. this time, I got one as well
• stopped for fast food for dinner because i felt lazy and really stressed
• got the kids home, fed them fast food for dinner
• helped melissa do some quick homework
• got emily dressed for swim team practice
• took emily to swim team practice where I typed away on the laptop to finish the story for the paper
• came home to do more homework with more kids
• bathed the kids
• dressed the kids in pajamas
• sat down to type this
• wished i had the time to ride in today’s 70-degree temps even if it was a bit windy
• exhaled

I showed up at RMR for the crit with a plan.

I wanted to wait a lap, get to the front and ATTACK solo and see what happened — it’s just a 30 minute race, after all.

What happened, however, was nothing like the plan.

I found myself at the front during the first lap. No one wanted to be up there.

So I stayed up front waiting to attack. But as I burned a match fighting the wind and providing a tremendous draft for the field, I quickly found out that was the only match I brought with me.

A funny thing happened, though. As we approached the start/finish line after the first lap, two guys made a move on the outside. I decided to jump over and grab their wheel. In doing so, the field drafting behind me decided to make their move to the inside. I caught the wheel of the two outsiders, but the inside group passed us all like we were standing still and by the time I swerved back to join the big group I was pretty much last in line and fading.

I gunned it around the first turn and tried to hang on. But after a lap I was toast. My legs just couldn’t turn over.

Methinks the problem was my late decision to race. I must have hit every red light along the way and in my haste to load up and get driving, forgot to grab some cash. A stop at an ATM left me literally seconds away from missing the start.

As the officials were calling the C Flight to the line, I was hustling up the tarmac and trying to sign in.

End result, my heart rate was sky high before I was even moving, my legs not even close to ready to work and my butt got handed to me after the first lap.

Lesson learned.

Saturday I had a great ride — until I encountered some road construction in Ogden and got the inevitable flat.

Normally, that’s not such a bad thing.

But this time it happened when I was rolling on my Reynolds SDVs and let me tell you, the tires I have mounted on those suckers are virtually impossible to get off.

So impossible, in fact, I broke three tire levers while trying to fix the flat and I was stranded.

But The Bike Shoppe was just up the road another couple of miles and my riding partner — my brother Jason whom I had mercilessly flogged up the mountain in Sardine Canyon on our final big LOTOJA training ride — took my wheel and tried to get up the road to reach The Bike Shoppe before they closed.

Alas, the shop closed at 4 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. as we had hoped and we thought we were out of luck.

With that bad news to relay, my brother called me and told me he’d bring my wheel back to me, then ride his bike ahead to his house in Layton and drive a mini-van to rescue me.

As he was about to leave, however, the owner of the shop must have noticed him and opened the door to see what was needed. Five minutes later, with a repaired and  fully inflated tire in hand, my brother headed down the road. The owner of The Bike Shoppe refused payment — maybe because he was closed and didn’t want to reboot the cash register and/or computers, maybe because he was just a nice guy — but sent my brother on his way to get me going again.

Folks, next time you’re in the Ogden area stop in and buy a tube, a pair of socks or some GU gels. I’ve given away a handful of CO2 cartridges, tubes, gels, etc., over the years knowing I’d be extremely grateful if, when I was out of the tools needed to get my ride on the road again, a stranger pulled up and offered to help.

That karma came back to rescue me Saturday.

Pay it forward.

In addition to political declarations, pledges, counter pledges and other partisan bullhonky on facebook … I really REALLY hate these

Goathead thorns. If ever there was a plant that deserved to go extinct, this is it.

But I rode my bike all the way to the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon for the first time ever this morning.

Every other attempt or psuedo-attempt was done with a narrow time window and I’d turn around to pick up a kid at school.

Today, I dropped the kids off at school, hopped on the bike and pedaled my butt all the way to the top — even thought about hitting Guardsman’s Pass, but that will have to wait for another time.

I had the road to myself. Vehicle traffic was extremely light and I only saw three other cyclists coming down while I was going up. I spotted a couple of others ahead of me just as I hit Solitude and I tried to catch them before Brighton. Alas, they turned off to go up Guardsman’s Pass when I was about 50 meters from catching them. I think they started their ride at Solitude and were out for a morning of mountain biking.

The ride down was fast and fun. Again, I had no problems with traffic except for one old guy in his antique convertible roadster. He was out for a slow relaxing drive and it took some skill to not collide with his bumped a couple of times when I let my descent fly.

My Garmin Edge 305 is dead.

Will not accept a charge. Will not light up. Will not make those little noises when hooked up to the computer via USB. Has an ugly, ominous film of moisture and bubbles in the monitor. Has not worked since my short loosen-up ride the day before the Bear Lake Classic Triathlon.

Dead.

And just 10 days before LOTOJA.

I noticed this Saturday morning when I tried to start the computer prior to my bike leg in the triathlon. I thought maybe the battery was just dead. Now it looks like I’ll need a replacement.

I’m probably going to go with a cheap and easy Cateye or something like that to get me to Jackson and then shop for the new training tool a little later.

Garmin has a sweet new Edge 500 coming out and Cyclops is also breaking out the Joule.

Both are tempting.

Today’s workout: A quick mile in the pool.

Kindergarten gives me a 2.5 hour window every morning. I can do pretty much whatever I want.

And so, with the 206-miles of LOTOJA staring me in the face, I decided to climb Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Great day for a ride. After getting past Storm Mountain and the S-turns I really enjoyed the gentle slope of the canyon more than any other time I’d made the climb.

Traffic was fairly light at 9 a.m. A couple of descending cyclists passed me early, but that was it. As I climbed, I found a rabbit at Mile 6 and chased until I felt I’d catch it soon. Unfortunately, the rabbit had other plans. Just as I was within 300 meters or so, she pulled off the road to eat a gel and drink some water — robbing me of the satisfaction of catching her. Instead, it felt like she said “I let you pass me” as I rolled passed her.

Later on, I saw another dot up the road and picked up the pace a little bit to catch Rabbit No. 2.

It turned out to be a fellow Porcupine rider, Sonia Maxfield, and after I passed her I slowed down and we pedaled along together for a couple of miles. Read the rest of this entry »

Become a fancy pants bike race promoter.

That’s right. I want to be the dork people get mad at before, during and after a bike race.

But I want it to last three days.

Here’s the idea: The Bear Lake Bicycle Festival Stage Race.

And I want to hold it in September when the crowds leave the lake but the weather is still great. Maybe the week after LOTOJA or maybe two weeks later to let some legs recover.

• Stage One – Friday: Round Valley Circuit Race. There’s a nice little paved round just south of the lake near Laketown. It’s a low-traffic farm road with lots of cow pies (I witnessed them up close and personal last week during my half marathon at the triathlon) but is a loop of about 10 miles. Plenty long for two or three packs to be on the course at the same time and there is a nice finishing straight the leaves the loop heading back to Laketown.
• Stage Two — Saturday: Bear Lake Road Race. Same course and distance as the May road race. Around the lake we go, classic sprinter’s race.
• State Three — Saturday: Laketown Time Trial. Again, trying to stay away from traffic, the out-and-back time trial goes up and down a little canyon south of Laketown
• Stage Four — Sunday: Minnetonka Cave Road Race. We finish things up with a second road stage that follows some of the same road as the lake loop. But instead of turning to go around the lake, we go another mile into Idaho and then turn uphill to climb to Minnetonka Cave which has a decent sized parking lot for the judges and finish line. It’s similar to climbing Emigration, but about 15 miles long with a steady climb over the final few miles.

Well, that’s my idea. Days, stages and stuff flexible. But I think it sure would be better than seeing the Utah cycling road racing calendar vitually disappear after June. Read the rest of this entry »

With the Bear Lake Classic 70.3 still a vivid memory — and who wouldn’t want to remember a GI-forced detour into the sagebrush next to a stack of honey bee boxes? — I’m on to the next big thing.

LOTOJA.

In 12 days I’ll be motoring down the road with more than 1,000 of my closest friends from Logan to Jackson and hoping for a similar time-reduction to this past weekend.

A year ago, I finished the 206 mile race in 11 hours, 31 minutes and 50 seconds.

This year, I’d like to drop a full 60 minutes off the time. Yes SIXTY.

Sure, in 2008 I ‘raced’ it with the Cat 4s, but I milked the feed zones out and paced myself trying to not overdo anything and end up stranded in Smoot or Grover waiting for my wife to rescue my sorry butt.

This time, I’ll stick with the group much better. I’ll waste little time at the feed zones and I’ll have another year of fitness and base building behind me. A finishing time of 10:30 can happen. Just ride in a group, ride hard, fuel properly and let it rip.

But back to the triathlon, my splits and my result. Read the rest of this entry »

So I raced in another half Ironman distance triathlon.

I improved on the swim, absolutely crushed the bike and suffered like never before on the run.

It’s hard to tell how you do on the swim because you can’t see other people. But I knew I wasn’t real strong because, well, I’m not a terribly fast swimmer.

On the bike, however, I impressed myself. I like to keep score on races like this and I passed 37 other cyclists with an H on their calf. Nobody passed me except one guy I passed on the next little roller.

In looking at the results, I had the 12th (at worst) bike split. That’s out of 79 racers.

The run was another story. To put it in the least-disgusting terms possible, I got some GI issues and at Mile 3 I took a detour down a little dirt road and hid behind some sagebrush to help fertilize the local agricultural enterprises.

From there, it was a challenge with each passing mile. Whether it was side aches, an ever-tightening hamstring, painful callouses on my big toes or overall fatigue, I fought that 13.1 mile run more than any other run I’ve done. It just hurt a lot.

And I got passed by 29 people and passed only one.

According to the results, I had the fourth slowest run split.

Still, I shaved 37 minutes off my previous 70.3 time and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

In other news: Some reporter wrote a story about Elden Nelson.