TwoWheeledWorld

I’ve been following along as a number of friends recount their plans this summer on their blogs. It’s been fun. But for whatever reason I have very few plans right now. Does this mean I’m content? Well, with views like this not much is left unsatiated…

If I weren’t having such a ball maybe I’d be racing a little better, but with the tumultuous life that was lead this time last year, I’m perfectly happy enjoying the 2011 cruise…

So far, my “Racing Lite” season is plugging along, despite a few bruises to the bod and to the ego. 7 minutes into my last event I’d get sideways on a slick log and careen into the not-so-soft clutches of a blue spruce…

…just after the crash…

But hey, with a not-so-regular training regimen I can’t expect a whole lot more than mid-pack finishes in the pro field, but I’m ok with that.

There’s something to this – it’s always been about longevity for me. You swing hard toward the right (no, not that right), strictly follow interval workouts and wear skin suits and take part in mandatory spin sessions, then  other years you swing to the left, throw on the baggies pack beers in the CamelBak and enjoy the trail…

The ebbs and flows of personal performance. After almost 2 decades of racing mountain bikes, I’ve got my formula.

In other news, it’s Wild America up at the Mountain Command Post, where me and the Mrs been spending as much time as we can…

Already checked off this summer’s list is a bear, moose, even a porcupine…

And then there’s all this crappy singletrack that’s been perpetually on the menu…

I mean, there are still some of the lingering effects of winter…

But, here, at the height of summer, that’s easy enough to forget about…

The racing season finally caught me…

Better late than never.  And knowing full well I had no reason to be in the front row of the pro field of Saturday’s 2011 Winter Park Series kickoff, I lined up elbow-to-elbow with the race favorites out of pure habit.

And seeing as my 2011 training program began about 2 weeks ago, I pounded the pedals at as wanton a pace as my pale white legs would allow.

And as the pitches steepened, the snow deepened on the sides of the service road used for the 5.5 mile hillclimb.  2600′ of elevation gain in just over half an hour.  By the almost 12,000′ elevation finish line the crisp June air would sear my screaming lungs as I fought for every pedal rotation to a mid-pro-pack 12th place finish…

It’s good to finally get one under the belt.  And despite the (still) record snowpack things up at the Mountain Command Post are really melting off nicely…

Winter is quickly receding to the highest elevations…

And all that white still needs to run off.  But what started out as an expectedly-wet recon mission to see what was rideable the following day turned into a fab 3-hour trail ride…

Being early yet, we were glad to have my hand saw that I stole from the Stunt Double last year.  We’d use it to cut through at least fifteen eight-inch diameter trees that had fallen across the trail.  Now THAT’S work – trail maintenance at its best – happy to oblige…

It’s shaping up to be a banner summer.  I wonder what the Stunt Double is doing?

With Phase 1 and Phase 2 now complete a headquarters…

It’s really time to get back down to bidness…

And after hearing about my “lite-duty” Spring, the ol’ training partner persuaded me to get back on track: STAT. The text message Friday nite went something like: “Epic ride tomorrow.  8am – my house.”

TwoWheeledWorld: “Weellll, I don’t know, i’ve got to go to the haaaaardware store, and gotta do some yaaaard work, and……I do have a race comin’ up…..how long’s the ride?”

The Ol’ Training Partner: “5 hours. It’ll be worth your while.”

TWW: “Ok – see you at 8.”

The thing about the Ol’ Traning Partner is that 5 hours usually means all day.  To The Mrs., a ride with the Ol’ Training Partner typically means, “see you tonite…”

But with summer finally here (I think) what better way to spend the day?  With little more that a coupla hours worth of training rides in the past several weeks, I decided 6 hours in the saddle and almost 60 miles in the dirt would surely super-charge me in to race shape, and pronto! 

I’d explore some of the old haunts with The Ol’ training Partner…

 and he’d show me some new routes near the old backyard that lay just below the surface for all the time I’d lived there…

I’ve been sworn to secrecy with regard to this precious and pristine loop.  But if you MUST know, here’s a map of what I remember…

It’s good to still be “in the know…”  By the end we were limping home, both elated and calorically depleted having endured a half-century worth of mountain bike mileage…

Summer’s here everyone, grasp this time and hold it high…

In the Colorado high-country, the winter of 2010-2011 can only be described as epic.  As of early May, mountain snowpack levels in some areas are still 200+ percent of average. 

 I found myself in way too many “make it up as I go” moments this past winter, as I bounced from one snowy pillow to the next…

And as a weekend warrior, I bagged more powder days than I can remember in a season.  This year’s winter review shows that, too.  Hardly a blue patch of sky to be seen.  With all the snowmelt that’s soon to come we’ll surely suffer the consequences, but looking back on the footage, I’d say it was worth it…

Turn up the sound and enjoy…

EpicWinter from TwoWheeledWorld on Vimeo.

Any other year and I’d be heading out to Fruita for the first race of my season this weekend.  But I gotta confess; this year, I’m getting a bit of a late start.  Poor Fido thinks I’m gettin ready to beat her, like, constantly…

I saw a Twitter feed the other day.  It read:  “Loading Spring…  Install failed. Error 404: Season cannot be found.”  Today, 70 degrees.  Tomorrow, 43 and rain. 

Instead of racing like I ought to be, I’m hip deep in a landscaping project that has taken the place of a fair bit of Spring training…

I’m trying to get through the bulk of it before summer hits, the melt-off at Mountain Command is done, and the trails beckon.  I already hear the call…

As fun as this is, I’m effen worked, and regularly.  Between almost breaking my foot when a 1+ ton boulder rolled over the top of my foot last week, wrestling with an 800lb, 30″ trencher, and moving literally 9.5 tons of river rock wheelbarrow-by-wheelbarrow, I got a deep respect for landscapers…. 

But there’s a deeper, darker side to not doing my diligence with regular Spring training – my first race is next weekend here in the Big D and it’s sure to be a sufferfest the likes of which I’ve not seen in some time.

With several key events already come and gone I feel well behind the 8-ball… like……….. 1-ball…….  This season I’ll define the term “racing into shape.”  I mean, I have been getting training rides in, sure, and hopefully my winter sports will convert. 

I’ve been hanging around with this big group of hunters lately, as evidenced by their orange and black garb.  Me and my blue and yellow ProCycling bumblebee suit amidst the masses…

But before I know it I’ll be back on the train again.  Besides, with almost 20 seasons under my belt, how slow could I get?  (Don’t answer that BMick…)

Meanwhile, a winter’s-worth of helmet cam ski footage is in the Editing Department.  Reels and reels of film are carefully being spliced…

And in other news, teammate Kalan “I Never Met A Rock I Didn’t Like” Beisel continues his “relentless and finess-less” reputation of making bicycle manufacturers work hard for their money…

Another one bites the dust… Kalan Beisel: giving new meaning to the term “disposable”…

Comin’ up, TwoWheeledWorld’s 2011 ski season review…

It’s a little strange to think that along the Colorado Font Range we’ve been seeing record dryness, wildfires, and epic winds, while the central and northern mountains have been seeing record snowpack…

Some readers may recognize this “D2/WTB” trail sign from race courses in the venerable Winter Park Series, that stands about 6 ft tall in summer…

But Spring’s gotta start somewhere…

In other news, I got a chance to touch base with the Stunt Double the other day at a recent ProCycling team meeting where we all sipped GuO2 from sports bottles, compared quad size, and discussed NATO’s role in Libya.  The quote of the meeting came, as it usually does, from the Stunt Double, who I overhead say, “the crappy thing about the race is that you’re always racing.”

……………I don’t even know what this means, but it seemed poignant at the time.

Above, wishful thinking at the base of the Jane.  Like I said, Spring’s gotta start somewhere.

In other other news, I’ve been supplementing my training time with preparing for an epic landscaping project in the new backyard…

I wonder if that wheelbarrow work, in any way, translates to saddle time?

I was reading an op-ed in my favorite bike mag  the other day – a piece about treating your bike with respect…

Photo: TWW archive

…About how showing up for a ride with your immaculately-kept and spotless bike doesn’t necessarily mean you never ride it.  The author took the angle that the rider must treat the bike with respect.  After all that it does to keep you on the trail – through the rock-strewn miles, delivering rider to the top of a climb and then navigating down a screaming descent on the other side safely, even comfortably…

Photo: TWW archive

Got me to thinkin’…..my mountain bikes do spend so much of their time spotless.  But they also spend so much of their time so caked with dried mud, road grime, horse poo, and river water you can hardly distinguish its color…

Photo: TWW archive

But the ritual of washing soon occurs; hand scrubbing each detail with warm soapy water, each spoke even, and gently spraying the sinful mud away.  Treating the bike as a sentient being and forming some unspoken personal bond….

  “Jump, crash, skid, and abuse your bike six ways to Sunday,” the author’s father used to say, “but lay the G*d d^mn3d thing down on it’s side again and I will find a new owner for it.”  

In other news, with the time change comes the return of the ProCycling Tuesday night rides.  Those leg-searing, heart-stopping tongue draped over the handlebar group rides I’m so fond of.  And since I won’t be attending those anymore living in the Big D, I’ve fortuitously found a suitable replacement…

Turns out a bunch of the competition have their own “Wednesday night World Cup” nearby, which I couldn’t be more happy about…

And that’s good news for me; a guy who’s always been a huge fan of procrastination.  I’m considering changing my scripted answer from “I’m a pro mountain bike racer” to “I race in the pro class.”  We’ll see, as the season looms…

Coffee brewing….  Check the temps…

8:07:  Hop on the ski bus.  Small talk with driver.  He has lived in Granby for 370 years…

8:52am:  Click in….  Warmup run – fresh corduroy…

9:25am: Leave the riff-raff.  Proclaim that warm-up runs are for pansies as I turn the planks toward the trees…

9:27am: Strain neck within first 3rd of the run.  Rescind pansy comment.

10:21am: A little high-altitiude training.  Head out to Vasquez Cirque.  Two mile hike at about 12,000ft.  Wind: 30mph.  Wind chill: cold enough not to want to know…

10:48am: Drop in.  These descents are never long enough.  Shin-deep softies…

10:59am:  Eagle Wind lift, via the Cirque.  Ski 12 minute laps in the steeps and trees.

11:49am:  Water break.  Idle chit-chat with the riff-raff from Ohio, or Illinois, or….Denver….  Eye their $12 bread-bowl overflowing with steaming chili or greasy grilled cheeseburger slopped in ketchup and mustard.  Eat yer heart out Anthony Bourdain…

11:51am:  Realize I strongly resemble a scrawny and drooling wolf pup eying everyone’s overpriced food.  Like that scrapper, Two Socks, in Dances With Wolves when he’s getting teased with jerky…

12:08pm:  Lunch.  Half-frozen turkey sandwich.  It’s dry, it’s cold, and it has no chili on it.  But what a view…

12:45pm:  The steeps off Bella Fouche.  See no one, but do see a sign that says Never Ski the Trees Alone. 

2:08pm:  Take the signs’ advice.  Interval session – the bumps at Mary Jane.  Acknowledge my age with each knee-pounding turn…

3:18pm:  Swill…

3:18pm: Swall…..ll…low…

3:52pm: Climb on ski bus.  Wrecked, dehydrated, and wind-burned.  Bus driver still lives in Granby…

3:59pm:  Mountain Command post…

5:56pm:  Simmering since 11.  Nice….

As winter will turn to spring in a few short weeks, the racing calenders of endurance athletes everywhere starts to fill up.  Registration for many 2011 summer events has already opened, and closed as racers vie for spots in limited-field events. 

I met up with a friend who works for VeloNews while skiing a couple weeks ago and we were talking on the ski lift…

 ….about the growing number of disciplines in the cycling world these days.  It used to be that if you raced mountain bikes in Colorado, you raced the venerable Colorado Points Series and a few National Championship Series events; and you knew you were racing in the premier events…

Now, it’s impossible to pin down theeeee premier series or event.  Between the ProXCT, Leadville 100, Mountain States, Winter Park, National Endurance Series, 24 Hour events, regional series………cross-country, short track, super-d, marathon, downhill……….it’s a lot to keep track of.

Another friend and I were talking while on a ride and he said, “What may be a 3rd-tier race for a top-notch pro like JHK I’ll treat like a World Cup.” 

And training regimens are equally as hard to nail down.  I read yesterday that there may be a difference in measured anaerobic thresholds between running and cycling.  There’s wattage, watts at lactate threshold, heart rate, perceived effort at the threshold and also across the continuum from easy to maximum.   WHAAATT??  Since when is the heart rate monitor not enough?? 

The bar is raised the more the masses train to this science and physiology.  What’s good for the human species may not be as good for those with limited weekly training time…

My advice, whatever your focus is this summer, wherever you are, show up to race.  We’re all at different stages of life.  But whatever your event, make it count because if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well…

Home Depot tells me, “It’s doing season” on their commercials, and the FedEx man seems to agree with a recent delivery…

With all the recent snow along the front range, you only get so many chances to get outside when you’re a workin’ stiff like me.  Certain days, you just kind of have to force it…

I was able to stay warm here, for example, by shaking the camera and taking blurry fotos on my way up a chilly climb the other day.  One day it’s 65 degrees, the next day it’s 20. 

The good news is that the US of A may actually see an end to daylight savings time within the next few years, which would mean all of us pasty-legged Coloradans (who work during the day) would get an extra hour or so of sunlight through winter.  If we could just do something about the cold…

Turns out they make extra-long valve stems for a reason.  And when you don’t have a long-valve-stem tube and you get a flat, you end up riding the flat home.  Bummer…

And speaking of cold, I’ve been getting my fill of vertical these days…

Yyyyyoowza….

…Putting the HD helmetcam through the ringer in preparation for a 2011 winter review.  I swear – my mind has turned into a series of season previews, annual reviews, and race bike interviews lately…. wait a minute…..I think I missed one of those recently…