the sound of settling

First race of the season

2009-04-12T14:11:00.008-06:00

Even though it was a race that wasn't really going to suit me (no real climbing) I decided I needed to get some race pace in my legs so I headed out to Tooele for the Tour of the Depot stage race.

Saturday was a morning 9 mile individual time trial that headed up a gradual and relativly short climb before turning around and bombing all downhill to the finish. I made pretty good time on the climbing section and tried to hold it off all the way downhill to the finish. I felt pretty good but am still lacking some high end power and sustainability. I ended up doing the 9 mile ITT in 21:54. It would have been nice if I had some aero wheels, helmet, bike to cut down on the time a bit, but that's ok since I wasn't racing on Sunday so the overall didn't mean much to me.

The afternoon consited of 5 laps on a 5 mile circuit that included about 2 miles of downhill, a 1.73% grade 2 mile climb (big ring climb) and about a mile of rollers. The finish was on the downhill section so it was going to be super fast. The climb wasn't long enough or steep enough to really shed the big sprinter types but it was worth a try. On laps 2, 3, and 5 I would hit the front of the group on the "steepest" section of the climb and drill the pace for a bit trying to wear people out. I was pretty happy about animating the race and trying to make some stuff happen. On the last lap I tried to drill in on the climb section but couldn't really get anything to stick. Even though I couldn't get away with a small group I was ablel to put myself in a decent position for the downhill sprint. I put in a good effort on the run into the finish and ended up 7th in the circuit. Not to bad for a climber I guess. Overall it was a good day of racing and a change to get out and test my legs. Next race up is East Canyon RR on the 24th and finally some good climbing.

First century (and a dime) of the year.

2009-03-01T20:39:00.004-07:00

On Saturday the Salt Sea Pirates gathered down in sunny and warmer St. George for an early season century. We had El Dentista, Deenacious, Mr. Fabulous, Eugie the Destroyer, El Esqueleto, Tillmann, Bryan (new to the crowd) and a bunch of Deenacious' family. We had a great ride of 110 miles through the desert country to the Zion National Park entrance and back. I didn't feel great the last 20 miles or so of the ride but it was still nice to be out riding. The weather was good and the company was awesome. Don't forget to check out the SSP blog for a write up on Skillz' race in Annapolis last weekend.

Riding in Nor Cal

2009-02-18T16:47:00.006-07:00

Eugena, Fisher and I have been in Northern California since Sunday evening. Despite the rain and cold we've been able to get some great biking in. We got out on Monday and today and caught the Tour of California yesterday (video).

On Monday I headed up and out on Calaveras road, which is a great road ride and one of my favorites here in the Bay Area. I finished the ride off by finishing the climb up the back side of Sierra road.
Tuesday we caught the Tour of California after they had ridden Sierra on their way to Calaveras road heading towards Livermore and Modesto. We parked ourselves on "The Wall" a short but steep grade (pitches up to 16%). These guys were just flying up the pitch, it is always incredible to see the Pros in action and up close, TV just doesn't do justice to their speed and power.
Today Eugie and I headed up to tackle the tough side of Sierra Rd. It's around 3.5 miles in lenght and averages over 10% grade whilc climbing almost 2000 ft above silicon valley. I tried to puch it hard and did the climb in just under 28 minutes, while averaging around 300 watts for the climb.
Tomorow we are going to hit up the Mt. Hamilton climb, a long slug in the hills above the bay area, it should be sweet.

Riding in SoCal

2009-02-12T23:12:00.006-07:00

Eugena, Fisher and I came down to San Diego to hang out with Tim and Charlotte, and naturally we brought our road bikes. In honor of the upcoming Tour of California finishing outside of San Diego this year we opted to ride the major climb in the last stage, Mt. Palomar.

This climb is awesome, it has over 21 switchbacks and is almost 7 miles in length. Eugena rocked the climb first while I hung out with the Fish boy. When Eugie was done tearing it up I went for it. This climb was totally awesome. It starts with a 5ish mile warm-up climb up a valley to reach the base of South Grade road. Once you turn onto South Grade it is all uphill and the switchbacks hit you immediately.

I wanted to use the first part of this climb as a field test to see where my fitness is. So I went all out for the first 20 minutes to see where my Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is. Field tests never, never are easy. They are always tough both mentally and physically. During the test I kept glancing at my average power to see how I was doing and unfortunately I was a little lower than where I wanted to be. After 20 minutes I just rode the rest of the climb at a nice tempo pace and ended up finishing the climb in just over 40 minutes. I bet the pros in the Tour of California this year will bust this climb out in under 30 minutes.....crazy fast. When I got back home I plugged the iBike in and did a power analysis of my ride to get the official word (the iBike software looks at all the little factors effecting the unit like slope and wind, and adjusts the power accordingly). After the file analysis I ended up pleasantly suprise with my FTP at this time of the year. Below is the clip from my iBike. The highlited portion in blue is the Mt Palomar climb (with the stats on the left). I put together a little video from the day on my mobileme gallery. All in all it was a superb climb and it is going to be sweet to see the pros duke it out on this climb in a week.

The Destoryer reigns supreme!!

2009-02-09T13:59:00.003-07:00

So on Saturday Eugena decided to get a early start on her first mountain bike season and signed up for the Frozen Hog mtb race in Alpine, UT. She kitted up for the women sport division on a day where the race would be not so "Frozen Hog" and more like "Slushy Hog". All in all she had a great time and 2 laps later she finished with a time of 1:20:55. Good enough for the top spot in her division and 5th overall in the women sport class! So she toughed out a super tough course that was more of a run-a-bike than an actual mountain bike race per se. Congrats Eugie!

Recieving her props for 1st place!

winter winter winter

2009-02-03T16:11:00.002-07:00

Eugena and I are much looking forward to the next couple weeks for a few reasons....

1st. A week from today we're heading to sunny California (San Diego first then on up to San Jose) to spend some time with family. Plus we're bringing the road bikes and will be doing our own little training camp. Riding in the bay area hills is one of my favorite places to ride. Eugena's parents live in an excellent location and it's super easy to hop on the bike and get on some sweet climbs.

2nd. Sort of related to the first in that we'll be in Cali while the Tour of California is going on. This year the race is drawing the most incredible group or pros ever to set foot in the country, and I'll quote their website on this so I don't have to type it all out:

"Featuring a field that includes seven-time Tour de France Champion Lance Armstrong and two-time defending Amgen Tour of California Champion Levi Leipheimer (both racing for Astana), the 136 rider peloton also is expected to include 2006 Giro d’Italia Champion Ivan Basso (leader of team Liquigas); 2008 Olympic Champion in the time trial Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank); 2006 Amgen Tour of California Champion Floyd Landis (Ouch presented by Maxxis); 2005 World Champion Tom Boonen (Quick Step); three-time World Champion Oscar Freire (Rabobank); two-time United States National Champion George Hincapie (Team Columbia); and the top American performer in the 2008 Tour de France Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Slipstream). Other anticipated participants include, 2008 Tour de France Champion Carlos Sastre (Cervélo TestTeam); four-time Norwegian National Champion Thor Hushovd (Cervélo TestTeam); 2008 U.S. Professional Champion and Olympic Gold Medal Winner Tyler Hamilton (Rock Racing); Mark Cavendish (Team Columbia), widely considered to be the world’s best sprinter; 2008 Best Young Rider in the Amgen Tour of California Robert Gesink (Rabobank); and 2008 Tour de France Best Young Rider Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank)."

So that's no less than 3 Tour de France champions and 3 world champions! Plus everyone else that just plain rocks (Andy Schleck for example). We're super excited to see some sweet racing next week.

3rd. I'm getting closer and closer to finishing my rotations and next monday the 9th we find out where I'll be going for residency. So mark you calendars and I'll try to not wait a month to post the verdict.

It's a Christmas Miracle!

2008-12-28T22:06:00.002-07:00

Check out Fisher is his first (but not last) Yellow Jersey!

So.....uh...ER huh....nice

2008-12-20T04:00:00.002-07:00

So it's 4am and I'm sitting here in an empty ER.....We finished taking care of all of our patients a little while ago so I'm just sitting here listening to the ER staff's holiday woes and waiting for the next sucker to come in...sounds like fun huh. All we need is a big code or something....that would liven things up a tad.

New start

2008-12-11T17:48:00.003-07:00

So last night I worked a 10pm to 6am shift in the ER, then I came home and slept till 11. After that I went for a 2.5 hour road ride with some friends, and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to bring this whole blog thing up to speed. So here it goes....

The summer was awesome, full on great weather, beautiful mountains, lots of biking, time with family and a pregnant wife. That last thing ended on august 5th with the birth of our fantastically awesome son Fisher (the boy Pirate). I hung around for about a month before jumping state lines to go sell my soul to some residency programs.

My trip over 3 months took me through 15 states and to 4 different residency programs in Ohio, Missouri, California, and Pennsylvania. Needless to say I'm glad to be back in Logan. It's no fun being away from your spouse and newborn son. But all's well the end's well and I'm back in Logan. I'm kind of on the tail end of interview season for residency so now its just sitting back and waiting for the big day, Feb 9th. That is match day and we'll know where were going for residency by 10am local time, mark it on your calendars.

While I was gone on out-rotations I managed to lose all of my cycling fitness. Perhaps it was the 12-16 hour days at the hospital, or perhaps it was the 3 meals a day of hospital food. But that's all in the past now. I started winter training at the beginning of December and while it is exquisitely painful it is also great to be training again and looking forward to the spring/summer cycling season. In fact we have a nice post-christmas family mountain bike trip to scheduled to St. George, so that will be sweet.

So since the rest of my 4th year is pretty posh, I should have the time and mental energy to post a bit more, so until then...

enjoy some pictures from the last couple months

What is this.....

2008-12-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

As of late (very late) there has not been much sound from my blog.....well stay tuned cause tomorrow I will finally vaguely write about some of the things that have happened in the last 8 months. As for now, that's all.

First race of the year

2008-04-20T12:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday my brother K-dog and I rode the Tax Day road race near Pocatello, ID. It was the first official Salt Sea Pirate showing of the season. After this year's long cold winter followed by a cold wet spring it felt really good to ride outside and get a gauge on how much I slacked during the winter. This was also my first race riding as a Cat 4, so I wasn't sure what to expect competition wise. They ended up starting the Cat 4 & 5's together which made for a nice large pack, about 50 riders. Starting with a larger pack was actually kind of nice because there were a lot of legs chasing down attacks and closing gaps. Once the race began k-dog and I tried to hang out near the front as we headed out into a 1.2 mile neutral roll out. After that we continued up a gentle 4.3 mile rolling climb up a canyon to the circuit. We would do 3.5 laps on the 7 mile circuit and the finish would be atop the climb on the 4th trip up. I love mountain top finishes, it always makes it exciting on the last climb. The climb up the canyon wasn't too bad, it was about 3 miles in length and averaged only 2% or so. Every time the group hit the real part of the climb (the last 0.8 miles, 5.5% avg grade) we would pick up the pace and shed a couple people. I felt really good each time we hit the climb on the circuit. By the 3rd time we went over the climb the group had shrunk to about 25 or so (notably missing was K-dog who spent a whole lap heroically chasing to try to catch the group after falling off on the steep part of the climb).

To get onto the last 0.8 miles of the climb we had to take a sharp 120 degree turn onto another road. I knew it would be important to be on the front going into that corner. From there the road turns sharply upward into a 8% grade. We were on the final approach to the climb and the finish. A couple guys attacked on the approach to try to break it up a bit, but we still went into that last corner 25 or so strong. I was sitting right in the front going into that corner so I hardly had to slow down. As soon as I came out of the corner and the road turned up I opened it up. I accelerated away and quickly put a good 100 feet or so on the group. I tried to settle into a pace and maintain my lead. Taking a quick glance back I could see a few guys that were making some ground and bridging up. It felt just like last year in Pescadero. I was seeing stars at this point as I tried to keep my speed. One guy bridged up and passed me, then two more. I was suffering, I actually don't remember a whole lot of details at this point, all I knew is that I need to keep going as hard as I could. I kept thinking "top 5, top 5, keep going..." One more guy started to pass me. I hopped on his wheel as a 5th rider came up. At this point we were only 100 meters from the finish. The three of us were together across the road, going max power for the line. It was our own mtn top sprint for 4-6th places. We were all within a wheels length as we crossed the line. Final result.....6th place.

It would have been nice to have been able to seal the deal and take the race, but I had a good race. 6th place is a pretty good result for my first cat 4 race and the first race of the season. It was nice to get some racing in my legs, its hard to simulate race-pace in solo training rides. They had my official time as 1:49:35, one second off the time of the winner (it was more like 5 seconds or so). I had a good race and a great time. I was also pretty pleased of my position in the race. I was near the front almost the whole race which made life a little easier when it counted. I need to learn proper timing. If I had waited another 45 seconds or so to attack I probably could have pulled off the win. It did feel good, like it always does, to make a decisive move and blow the race apart. I just get really antsy and excited and I let it fly too early (same thing in Pescadero last year). But hopefully I'm learning when to let loose and when to conserve. I almost wish the climb would have been longer to break it up a bit and separate the climbers some more. Rachel, my sister-in-law, was there to support us and take some pictures and she got a great one of the 3 man sprint at the end. Next up is likely the Bear Lake RR (52 miles, rolling terrain, windy), not my type of race to win cause it usually comes down to a sprint but will be a great race.

iBike power file from the race. During my attack I put in 423 watts for just over 3 min at a max Heart rate of 193.....yeah it hurt

K-dog suffering at the finish.

My longest ride of the season

2008-04-13T22:16:00.001-06:00

While 1/2 of the SSPs were tearing it up in the far reaches of the frozen north, a small group of pirates gathered down south for a nice spring ride. Scott, Kellen, John (sp?) and I met for a great little ride with some climbing. I left from headquarters in Sandy for a ride to American Fork. After meeting up with the guys we went back over traverse mtn, into bluffdale, past Camp Williams, into Lehi and wound our way back to AF. I left Kellen and John there and rode back to the house. I ended up with 83 solid miles and around 6700 feet of climbing in there on the 3 trips over traverse mtn. My longest ride of the season and one that I needed in prep for a race I have this weekend (Tax Day race). All in all it was a great ride with great company. For the interested I posted my iBike file below. The blue highlighted part is my self-timed traverse climb (the selection stats are on the left). I did pretty well. I was riding it at around 85% of my max effort and was only 38 seconds off my record time.

A great little video

2008-03-22T12:00:00.000-06:00

Get out on your bike!

I need better weather

2008-03-16T21:20:00.000-06:00

I can't wait for this place to dry out and warm up so I can spend some consistent time outside and away from my trainer indoors.
This is just great inspiration:

Finally there will be a precedent set.

2008-03-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Check out this article from the Salt Lake Tribune. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

drag race

2008-03-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Support Me, Support those who live with Multiple Sclerosis.

2008-02-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

You will hear this from me many times from now until the end of June.
Please support me as I raise money for the MS 150 this year. Your donation will help the people who live with the same disease I was diagnosed with in 2004. I've been touched by the stories of those who live with Multiple Sclerosis and I will fight for them and for me.

Click here to visit my personal MS 150 page to donate.

Or even better, click here to join our team and ride for those with MS.

Something to keep my mind off the 6 foot piles of snow in my driveway

2008-02-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

So I have this gut feeling winter is on it's way out. Maybe its the fact that its almost March, maybe its because I can't imagine it can keep on like this for much longer. More importantly the reason I feel the demise of the giant snow piles is soon is because the USA professional cycling season began today. The Tour of California began today with a short 2.1 mile prologue in Palo Alto, CA. I was envious of the sunny and 60 degree weather and cycling freedom. Its been snowing here since ohhhh.....early December (although i can't complain too much cause its good to have the snowpack for the states water). I've been on my trainer indoors since late last fall and I needed to get outside. The captain and I took a nice spin outside while were down in slc this last weekend. It was a little chilly but other wise good cycling, anything outdoors is good cycling for me right now. But I regress, the Tour of California is back and stronger this year. They have 5 current of past world champions at the race this year (Cancellara who won the prologue today, Bettini, Boonen, Freire, and the Lion King himself Mario Cipollini). It should be sweet racing. Levi will be racing with fire in his belly after his team got the shaft from ASO the organizer of the Tour de France. You can support him and this injustice towards the greatest cyclists in the world by going here. Finally, cycling season has begun!

On other (and more important) notes Eugie is trying to not let this super influenza that she caught get the best of her. She's been sick this whole past week and luckily her mom and sister have been in town to hang out while I've been up in Idaho on my Psychiatry rotation. I feel bad for my wife who hasn't had a break from feeling like crap since Thanksgiving time. Just as she was getting over the wonderful gift of nausea and vomiting given to her by the little blessing she's carrying, she found this bug floating around. Although if you look at her face in the picture below, she still has some fight in her...

Kiowa has even taken to mourn for Eugie as she tries to get better:

But as of now, it looks like we have a few more weeks of snowy times. Luckily I'm almost done with my Psych rotation. I think life will seem a bit more cheery when I'm not surrounded by people with chronic mental illnesses.

The Cancellara from the Tour of California is courtesy of Jonathan Devich on cyclingnews.com

My commute to the hospital is kind of like this....

2008-01-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

with a few exceptions....

Turkey day in Moab

2007-12-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

Right after I posted the cross pics I got an email from Paul with a link to his Moab pics. You can find them here.

Where did this come from?

2007-12-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

So I went down to Salt Lake Friday evening with the anticipation on racing a cyclocross race at Wheeler farm on Saturday. The weather looked average for an early December weekend and the storm that was forcasted to hit must have made a wrong turn.....so I thought. I woke up on Saturday morning to 6 inches of the classic Utah fluffy stuff. It was beautiful and was going to make for a VERY interesting race. To get to the point, I wish I could have enjoyed the very slippery and very snowy course. I was feeling so crappy during the race I didn't have a chance to have that much fun. I hope its just the fact that I'm still getting over some viral URI that I caught. Looking back on the race it was pretty fun, I must have had at least 2 or 3 full on triple-rag-doll crashes as my bike decided to slip one direction on some off-camber turn and sent me flying the other direction. It was snowing so hard that my dad's auto-focus on his camera had a hard time focusing on the right object. So I'm pretty sure I came in dead last in the single speeders. Some of those guys are freaking fast. Not that I could keep up anyway but it sure didn't help that I wanted to vomit the whole race, but I guess this is what cyclocross is all about. More pictures here.

PS. I will be posting some pics from our awesome Turkey day Moab mountain biking trip soon. Paul Fagan and Titus joined us in the desert from some sweet mountain biking. Unfortunately our camera malfunctioned and most of our picture were lost, so I'm waiting on Paul and Titus to send me some of theirs. Eugena posted a few pictures and a bit about the trip here.

My cousin and Salt Sea Pirate extrordinaire raced as well. He had a good race breaking in his new Felt cross bike.
Racer from Racers Cycle service absolutely tearing it up in the single speed class.

The run up

White Pine-Bunch Grass

2007-11-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

So I finally got to ride white pine-bunch grass today. I haven't ridden it since Ian went down during my first ride with the Mooseknucklers. So I was stoked to finish it today, and it didn't disapoint. After climbing around 1000 feet we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the Gog and Magog peaks, White Pine lake, and an 8 mile singletrack descent back down to the highway. It was incredible and no one bashed their face into a rock to that's always a plus.

You can do pretty much anything on a bike

2007-11-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

I found this on How to Avoid the Bummer Life, and its pretty much the coolest biking team sport that involves a court, a ball and a net.

Fall mtn riding and a really old tree

2007-10-26T22:18:00.000-06:00

Some fall mtn biking pictures: We rode the Jardine Juniper trail this afternoon. 6ish miles to the tree (3200 year old Juniper perched on the canyon wall), lots of climbing then one incredible ride back down.

The long season of Appys and ghost tumors

2007-10-25T22:22:00.000-06:00

So the last 48 hours have been pretty much the longest of my life. I got a good taste of what is in store for me post-graduation (I hear the internship screaming my name). It went a little something like this....

Wednesday was going to be a great day, we had some really interesting surgeries planned for the day. Wednesday is the big surgery day for the surgeon I've been working with for the past month. Since this was going to be my last surgery day on this rotation we scheduled 4 surgeries for the morning; one retrograde cystoscopy/pelvic mass removal, one neck and thyroid exploration, one hernia repair and ONE lap appy (laparoscopic appendectomy). The first surgery was scheduled to begin at 0730, so I was there at a little after 0700. The patient came in the surgery proceeded and of course went over the time we had planned. No problem, we only had THREE more surgeries and it was only 1015. It was only downhill from there.....

The neck exploration was supposed to be so we could find some recurrent thyroid cancer......4 1/2 hours later and no mass to be found we finally gave up and finished the rest of the surgery. Ok NOW we were running a bit late, it was 1530 and we had only finished our second case. Mostly we were upset because it meant that the following two patients who were supposed to be done by early afternoon had not had anything to eat since last night and they were still going to have to wait. We were so behind we got right into the next case, a simple hernia repair. Luckily it was just that, simple. We got this person done and got moving on our "last" patient of the day an inflamed nasty case of appendicitis. It was at this point that our day took a turn for the long....

You see, we were operating at one of the two hospitals in Logan, and simultaneously we were on call at the other hospital. Seeing that it was now after 5pm the emergency room called the operating room and informed us that there was possible two more cases of appendicitis waiting for us. We had them admitted and they were told to hang tight until we got over there. Oh yeah, the ER also had a pneumothorax (dropped lung) for us to consult on and admit when we got there. We finished lap appy #1 around 6pm and headed over to the ER at the other hospital. We took care of the pneumo guy and go him admitted to the surgery floor. We evaluated the two people waiting for the appendix treatment and decided they both needed surgery. Off to the OR we went. We got going on appys #2 and #3 as soon as we could. Both cases were relatively straight forward and went off with out a hitch, so they went pretty fast. Around 20 minutes from incision to closure. Closing did take a little longer since we decided to suture them (for my practice) instead of skin staples. But we got done with the surgeries and the heaps of paperwork around 2230. Ok, I was exhausted. I had been on my feet for 15 hours holding retractors, driving the scope, sewing and trying to learn. I rode home, crawled into bed with Eugena and crashed. Less than 2 hours later Eugena wakes me up telling me someone called me. Although my phone was right next to my head it didn't even stir me. I checked who it was and sure enough it was the Doc.....we were on call all night and one more of the appendixes in the world decided to call it quits. So around 1am I'm back in the ER evaluating this patient and sure enough she needs surgery. 2am...back to the OR. We get the patient in the OR, quick induction of anesthesia (the anesthesiologist let me intubate!), and we're back in the belly for appy #4 since 5pm. We get it out, close em up, finish the paperwork and stop by the ER to make sure nothing else is there before we get back in warm beds. There must be some weird alignment of the moon or stars cause this little organ was going bad left and right here.....yeah appy #5 had just walked into the ER. Most of the OR staff (Anesthesiologist, scrub nurse, circulating nurse, recovery nurse) had gone home. Once we rounded everyone back up again we were back in the OR taking out #5 in the space of 11 hours. Needless to say my eyes were screaming out for sleep by the time we finished around 430 AM. I drove home very carefully, luckily we don't live far from the hospital.

I had to be back at the hospital at 0730 Thursday morning to round on the the heap of patients we admitted post-op.

Final count:
20 hours either in the OR, in the ER or on the floor.
4 hours of "sleep"
9 surgeries included the pneumothorax (we placed a chest tube which is a minor surgery)
15 trocar port sites closed by me (3 per appy patient)
1 intubation
and I'm pretty sure I ate some food somewhere in there.

I think the worst part about this is that I had not mentally prepared for this long of a day. I've done 20+ work shifts before and I've gotten through them. But this was unexpected. I know I can expect days like this during internship, so in that sense it was a good look into what is to come.

Today (Thursday) after getting home at 0430 sleeping for 3 hours I went to the hospital to round. This morning a patient asked the doc about the role of the appendix, he replied "It's there so it can go bad and they can wake us up in the middle of the night."After rounds, we had a full day of follow-ups and consults in the office. I did get to remove a couple lipomas from a patients arm on my own, which was cool. Oh, then we had an emergent bilateral hernia repair this evening after the clinic at 5pm. Yeah, long days, but I've had a good time on this surgery rotation, it's fun to be in the OR, working with your hands, cutting, sewing, stapling, taking stuff out....not quite sure I want to spend this much time in the operating room though.

I'm going to bed....stupid appendix...

The cold, then the rain, then the mud

2007-10-21T10:25:00.000-06:00

My first cross race was a blast. My dad drove up from Sandy to Ogden to race and his category went an hour before the single speed category. For an extra 8 dollars the race organizers let you race a 2nd category so I signed up to race with my dad. I could just take it easy and get to know the course and be all warmed up for the single speed race. The weather was a little chilly and some very light drizzling kept things a little damp, but nothing crazy. We started off with about 30 or so other C-flite riders. The course was great, we had a little 20 foot run up where you get off your bike and run up this small but steep sandy hill, then by the start/finish area they had three 1 foot tall barriers that you get off your bike and jump over. The race lasted about 40 minutes, and we both rode well with out a problem. I had gotten a little wet, so I went back to the car to change before the single speed category started. I got to the car, changed and it started to rain....quite heavily.

There were about 12 or 13 single speeders, all likely really strong so I just wanted to finish the race and not die in the process. I had ridden the course for 40 minutes just before this so I was comfortable with the terrain but the rain had brought a whole new aspect. The group started fast and I settled into my own rhythm. Our race was 45 minutes long but after about 5 minutes I had lost all feeling in both my hands. One of the good things about riding a single speed bike is that you don't have to worry about shifting. So basically all I needed to be able to do was grasp the brake levers with my frozen stumps to check my speed.....no problem. After about 25 minutes my hands regained feeling so that was nice, but it continued to rain and the course was getting very muddy. The run up was a big wet mess and it took a good minute or so riding afterwards to get my pedals and shoes cleared of muck and engaged. In reality the mud made the course completely different and quite fun actually. I was fish tailing all over the place, and actually got a good face full of mud when I crashed in a sketchy corner. I was having a blast, I could feel my hands, I was a little cold but otherwise pretty comfortable, covered in mud and just having fun. So basically I'm hooked. This was a classic Cyclocross weekend...cold, rain, and mud. I loved it.

Same corner as above, just after the rain...

Check out more pictures here.

Time for a new challenge

2007-10-17T19:19:00.000-06:00

Its not that I'm particularly awesome at the things that I already do but I somehow managed talking Eugena into letting me sell one of my older bikes and using that money to build another bike. So what form of biking is left that I haven't dabbled in? I have a road bike that I spent a lot of time on this year (on a side note, today my upgrade was accepted so starting now I will be racing as a cat 4 on the road), and I love riding my single speed 29er mountain bike so what's next? I decided to start racing cyclocross. The sport is pretty much designed to be a suffer fest. The races are held in the late fall, early winter, so that means cold rain, snow, and mud. The course is usually a short 1.5-2 mile course with short steep hills and barriers that force you to get off and run. It pretty much combines cross country running and mountain biking but all on a road bike (with knobby tires). Sounds exciting huh?

This Saturday is my first cross race. Utah has a 10 race cyclocross series and I'm going to try to race 2 or 3 of them. I decided to build the cross bike up as a single speed. I've been riding the single speed mtn bike for almost a year and I love the simplicity of it. You get a great workout and it allows you to focus more on the ride, not the bike. Fortunately the utah series has a single speed class, unfortunately the guys who ride single are crazy fast. So pretty much all I'm shooting for this weekend is a finish time....any finish time. Cyclocross is a good way to stay in shape in the winter months, plus who doesn't like riding in cold, rain, mud and snow?

World Cyclocross champ Sven Nys

There is so much potential

2007-09-24T22:13:00.001-06:00

If we could just get people off the sofas, out of their cars and on to a bike I think communities and businesses would realize the healing power of 2 wheels.

LOTO....BLAH

2007-09-14T18:28:00.000-06:00

I've been putting off writing this post. I frankly am kind of over it already but I know some of you out there (maybe one of the 4 or 5 who read this blog) are aching to know. LOTOJA was last Saturday. Everything was in place for a good ride, I had a great nights sleep, I had eaten well the week or so before, I felt good. The only thing that was worrying me was my hamstring had been acting up. On Thursday Eugie, Jansen and I went for a short 30 miler road ride. About half way into the ride my hamstring started to hurt (my biceps femoris muscle for the anatomists). It has been a minor injury I've been nursing for a month or so. This ride though it was killing me. It hurt so bad that I pretty much hobbled home. Scared that this was going to destroy my race in a day I iced it, and rolled it out really well that evening. The next day it felt great, no worries there right?

Race morning was pretty good. I woke up early and started getting ready. We had all my family and some friends staying at our place so things were a little busy around the house but not too bad. The weather report looked great for the day and we were getting excited. After some last m minute things Jansen, Eugie, Kellen and I took off for a small warm up on our way to the start. We timed it perfectly and rolled to the start about 3 minutes before our scheduled start time. All the pirates gathered and waited. We had myself, Cap'n, Jansen, Kellen, Eugie, and Scott all riding in the same group so it was great. And Jay the dentist was only starting 6 minutes behind. They started us and off we went rolling through Logan towards Preston, ID. Jansen, Kellen and I had planned on racing with the pack so we planned on skipping the first feed zone in Preston to avoid the huge crowds and ball of nervousness in Preston. We took enough food and water to get us to the Montpelier feed zone. From Preston the road begins to climb towards strawberry summit. Once the climbing really began some of the guys in the group turned up the pace and I just follow their wheels. Once guy really cranked up the pace and blew what was left of the group apart. Kellen and Jansen could hold on and rode at their own pace the rest of the day. As we neared the top of strawberry summit we looked around and there were only 6 or 7 of us left from our group. I was right where I wanted to be, the only problem was that my left was starting to bother me a little bit.

We dropped down to Montpelier for the feed. I got my stuff with out a problem (except my Ibuprofen that I forgot to take...) and started to climb with the other 6 guys up the towards the next challenges of the day, Geneva summit and Salt River pass. Going up those climbs the pace was fast but not killer. The King/Queen of the mountain was on salt river pass and I decided that I wanted to "win" the KOM for our group even though I wouldn't get anything for it (they only give a prize to the top king/queen for the whole race!). It was more a matter of trying to save face since by then my hamstring was on fire. I took off from my comrades around 1.5-2 kilometers from the top and scorched my way to the top. We regrouped on the descent and rode well together into the next feed zone of Afton.

I got my feed in Afton from Kellen's wife Rachel (she switched to support me since I was ahead of Kellen and Jansen). I had a small croissant sandwich that I ate and finally took some Ibuprofen. The road turned up Star valley and we had a 10-13 mph head/cross wind to make things nice. After we left Afton I started to feel sick. My stomach went into anarchy mode and was cramping severely. Plus my leg was starting to turn into a stabbing pain instead of the aching that it had been the previous 130 miles. My stomach got worse, my leg got worse and I fell off the back of the other 5 or 6 guys. So long......I was gone. I knew I had at least a 20 mile ride into the next feed zone at Alpine Junction. The wind was relentless, the stomach cramps never let up and I was practically pedaling one legged because it hurt too much to put power into my right leg. It was a long and painful 20 miles. I fought and fought to get into Alpine. I made up my mind that I was going to call it a day once I got there. I did not think I was capable of riding the last 46 miles or so to the finish.

I rolled into Alpine defeated. I saw Rachel and told her I was done. She coerced me into riding up a little ways where she could try to massage my legs out a bit (I was lucky that she happens to be a massage therapist). I sat on the ground in Alpine for 25 minutes, trying not to throw up, and having Rachel rub out my right leg. I used the restroom and told her I would try to ride a little farther. She said she would meet me in Hoback junction (some 25 miles from the finish). Luckily the wind had turned up the canyon so we had a nice tail wind to push us along. I felt better but was still struggling. I made it to Hoback, and Rachel gave me another 20 minute leg rub massage. I knew at that point that I could finish. The last 20 miles or so are a blur. I had enough energy and pain management to grab onto the tail end of a 4 person group into Jackson. One of the worst parts about this race is that you hit Jackson Hole around mile 200, but the finish is actually in Teton Village, another 6 miles away! I pushed as hard as I could that last 1/2 hour. It was painful and was not pretty but I rolled across the line with a finish time of 11 hours and 1 minute. My bike computer gives me a ride time of 10 hours and 14 minutes, so I spent around 45 minutes on the side of the road trying not to die. After the race I felt even worse. My stomach in an attempt to destroy me was cramping so badly that I hardly made it back to the finish line to see Eugena and my dad finish (her story of extreme suffering and incredible fortitude is a story for her to tell).

So almost one week later, I feel pretty good. The seasons are changing and its been great to get out on the mountain bike (the sugar and I went for a 24 mile mountain ride deep in the Wasatch today that was incredible). I'm a little disappointed in how my race turned out, but since bike racing isn't my life's purpose I'm ok with it. I know I could have done well (the guys I was riding with until mile 130 took 1,2,3,4 for our group), and I always have plenty of biking seasons ahead of me. I would like to get a sub 10 hour race some day, maybe next year, maybe the year after (I'm trying to talk Eugie into riding it next year on a tandem with me). So for now, I have a lot of cool mountain biking to do.

PS. I finished my 2nd week of clinical rotations and have already learned more about real, practical medicine than a whole quarter of school. I love being out helping patients.

The Hillclimb

2007-08-19T15:45:00.000-06:00

So after a week or so of hanging out in California (not really riding much after our awesome rides), and driving back to Utah, my brother Kellen and I signed up to do the snowbird hillclimb road race. Basically its a 9.6 mile suffer fest up Little Cottonwood canyon. You climb 3300 feet from the valley up to Snowbird ski resort. This climb is worthy of any Grand Tour. I hoped to race well but my legs felt empty and I had some stomach problems. I just checked the results and I ended up taking 14th in the cat 4/5 group. Ohh well, luckily I felt better as the climb went on and I was able to finish strong. Captain, Eugie and Scott left early and met us up at the finish so it was cool to see them up there. Eugena took this picture right at the finish so I was deep in the hurt box. Below is a little video I found of the Google Earth version of Little Cottonwood canyon.

SSP in cali day 4-The Lost Coast

2007-08-12T14:29:00.000-06:00

Today was the Queen day of the trip. We were about to get all we could ever ask for in a bike ride; Amazing scenery, epic views, great weather, awesome climbs, thrilling descents, good company, and excellent support. We started the ride in the Avenue of the Giants - it is a road that is surrounded by gigantic redwood trees hence the name Avenue of the Giants. We rode in the redwoods for about 25 miles but since part of out destination was the lost coast we needed to get over the hills and mountains that separated us from the beach. That took us to Panther Gap, a nice 8 mile climb up and over the coastal mountains. The climb was beautiful, no cars, amazing scenery, and switchbacks!
From the top of the climb we had an incredible view of Mendocino county. From there we had some rolling hills and a few 1 miler climbs to get us to the lost coast. We were on an amazing descent then suddenly the ocean opens up to your view. The road along the coast was a little more challenging then we anticipated. I'm not sure if it was the 25-30 mph winds, or the occasional sand blasting that we got along the 6 mile stretch, not to mention the only way to get off the coastal road is up "The Wall".
The Wall is a 16-18% 1 mile climb that juts up from the coast to get you over the coastal mountains. The look of it is exactly what it feels like, pure and unadulterated suffering. Its steep, it was windy, and it was amazing. I haven't ever rode up something so steep for so long. It was a pure brute of a climb, it really isn't that long, but when you are going 4-5 mph it seems to take forever. Once over the top of this hill we had a nice fast descent before beginning the next climb, the "Endless Hill", aptly named for it's length (8 miles) plus the loads of false summits that give you the rush that you're almost done only to disappoint again and again. I left the Capn' and eugie on this climb, mostly because I just wanted to get it done with and under my belt, knowing we had a 7 mile descent to Ferndale, were we would finish. I felt great on the climb and quickly settled into a rhythm. When the Capn and Eugie finally rolled over the top of the climb we were excited to be done and loving the ride we had just been on. This maybe the coolest ride I've ever done. The scenery was amazing, and the views were unbeatable.
Stats: 77 miles, 8200 feet of climbing, Lots of huge Redwoods, 25-30 mph winds, 1 insanely and excruciatingly steep climb (the other climbs weren't quite as steep as the Wall), miles of twisty fast descents and one great ride.

SSP in cali day 3-Bit off more then we could chew

2007-08-12T13:44:00.000-06:00

We decided to use day 3 sort of as a rest day. We had a century on the schedule but we decided to cut the ride short and only do like 70 miles or so. We headed out of Healdsburg (a little north of Santa Rosa, Ca) by car to get a lot of climbing out of the way. At least we thought we were getting a lot of the climbing out of the way. Right after we started we had a quick 1/4 mile jaunt up a 16% grade. The road was mostly up and down, but quiet and once we got into a rhythm, a beautiful ride. We ended up riding only for a couple hours and we didn't make it that far. But we had a nice time out in the hills above the vineyards.
Stats: 22 miles, 2200 feet of climbing, One amazing Buddhist Temple complex, and a great little warm up for the next day.

SSP in cali day 2-Sierra the Great

2007-08-12T13:17:00.000-06:00

Day 2 brought the arrival of the Sky Captain and his lovely Queen and we decided to head out to so one of the coolest rides in the bay area: Calaveras road. The road snakes along the back side of the foothills east of the bay and has been featured as the last part of a stage in the last 2 years of the Tour of California. We headed out on Calaveras road which snakes it's way along the hillside, above a reservoir and winding through Oak groves. We headed to a little town called Sunol where we got some lunch then made our way back. I won the KOM points on the way back after a suprise attack from the captain. Really the only traffic we saw on the road was a random cow that had wandered onto the road. We headed back to town and the Sky Captain and I broke off from Eugie to ride up Sierra Road. This climb is a beast. Its not the length (only 3.6 miles) but rather the grade. It starts off right away with a 16% pitch and on some of the switchbacks kicks to 18%. The climb never gets easy. Once you're at the top though you get unspoiled view of the sprawling city below and are rewarded with a fast and exhilarating descent back home. This is one of my all time favorite rides and it was great to ride it with eugie and the Captain.
Stats: 57 miles, 5500 feet climbing, 1 bown cow, and a heaping bowl of suffering on Sierra.

SSP plunder california Day 1

2007-08-12T12:48:00.001-06:00

Day 1: After arriving in cali on Sunday we headed out for a sweet and killer ride on monday morning. The weather was a nice cool 70 deg and we decided to do a ride called the "Bay to Coast Classic". It starts in Palo Alto and heads over the mountains to Pescadero on the coast. Part of the race that I did in June is on the same roads so we were excited to get some sweet riding in. The road immediatly turned upward with a 9 mile climb into the coastal mountains. The climb was beautiful as we rose above the sea of asphalt and metal that is the Bay area, although it was a pretty steep climb. Once on the top though we were treated to an amazing 7 mile descent through the redwoods to get to the small community of Pescadero. After meeting our family there for lunch we headed out on Stage road (part of the Pescadero classic race course). The course proved to have a little more climbing then we anticipated so we decided to change our course a little bit and end up hooking back on the route we took to the coast. It's hard to be upset that your climbing a long hard hill when the road you are on is free of traffic and you can sit and spin quietly as you ride through beautiful redwood forests. After all the climbing was done we had a thrilling descent back to the car below. It was a great ride and I'd jump at the chance to ride it again.
Stats: 60 miles, 6600 feet of climbing, 2 pesto chicken sandwiches and 1 giant cast iron skeleton with a 50 caliber machine gun.

The dual

2007-08-11T11:12:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday we gathered in southern Utah for a supported century called the Desperado Dual. It is held in beautiful southern utah canyon country and it did not disappoint. The morning was a bit chilly and we started the 106 mile loop about 5 minutes late. Soon the temp warmed up and we started the gentle climb up red canyon. About mile 38 Sugar who was wearing the best young rider jersey called it a day and split to ride back to Panguitch. After around mile 40 the team finally found it's groove. We had the core SSP team with a few friends that wanted to ride with the Pirates for the day. We had a total of 10 or so riders. Around mile 45 we cruised upon a small group and they hopped on the back of the Pirate train. It was a pretty site seeing 10 or so SSPs pushing a 26 mph pace at the front of a group of 30 or so riders. The rest of the day was fast and fun. We flew down a long descent and the ride back to town was a little slower with a slight head wind. All in all it was a very fun century for the team. We'll be back next year.

Good Mountains

2007-08-02T18:04:00.000-06:00

The last couple weeks have been kind of crazy. Eugena, Kiowa and I made the move from Kirksville, MO to Logan, UT about 2 weeks ago and are finally getting settled in. We were down in SLC a couple days for my younger brothers wedding and I had the chance of riding the most epic and leg-busting ride of my life...more on that later. First our new place in Logan is pretty much the sweetest place we've had thus far in our relatively short married life. We have a good sized house with a nice backyard. There is a little canal that runs along the outside of the fence so Kiowa gets morning and afternoon swims to keep her furriness cool during these hot summer days. The house is withing walking distance to a bunch of stores, and the best part by far is that I have space for a sweet bike shop. No longer will I have to use our office/study room/storage room to work on our bikes. Logan so far is awesome, it's sitting right by the mountains and is a pretty quiet town. Bigger than the ville, but not so huge that you get choked out by asphalt everywhere. I went mountain biking with Eugena and my Dad yesterday and it was so nice to be up in the mountains. Man I didn't realize how much I missed the high country, plus the trails out here are pretty cool. I did go on a mtn ride with some guys from a local shop and was able to see a guy endo and face plant into a rock (a nice chance to practice a little wilderness medicine), he busted out some teeth and after we got him down the canyon to a doctor he ended up with 3 busted teeth, a fractured maxilla and some facial lacerations. So it was a pretty exciting first mountain biking outing.

By far the coolest ride I was able to do since being back at elevation was what we have dubbed the "Triple Death Threat" ride. My older brother (Mr. Fabulous), my then-soon-to-be-wed younger brother (k-dog) and I left early one morning for Millcreek canyon. Millcreek would be the first of three canyons, followed by Big Cottonwood, then finally Little Cottonwood. Millcreek is a great climb, about 8.5 miles long and averages around 6.5% grade with sections that kick up to 15%. Big Cottonwood was just that, big. It's about 15 miles avg 5% grade. Then when we finally came to Little Cottonwood, the hardest of them all, 9 miles at around 8% avg grade, and in the heat of the afternoon. It was easily the hardest ride I've ever done. This was a courageous endevour, We didn't know the exact milage or the exact amount of feet to be climbed when we started, we just knew it would be a lot....This is what my ibike elevation profile revealed: If you look at the bottom you can see the elevation climbed....yeah almost 11,000 feet in 86 miles. It was a blast.

Tomorrow we are hitting the road again first for southern utah for an organized century, then to california for a week long Salt Sea Pirates LOTOJA training camp. Eugie has organized a bunch of sweet road rides in northern california so it should be a blast.

The bike shop

The new addition to the bike family

Capital "P"

2007-07-02T11:16:00.000-06:00

I just got my board scores back and.....I passed! A nice relief, now I can actually enjoy the rest of the summer.

A beautiful place and a great race

2007-06-12T09:46:00.001-06:00

When we were making plans for our trip in California and Utah I was trying to figure out how we could spend enough time in California with eugie's family while still being able to be back in slc for the sugarhouse crit that I wanted to do. It just so happened that I came across another race in California the same day as the sugarhouse crit, that was the same price and it kept us in cali another 2 days. When I found the race it was full so I put my name on the waiting list and hoped for the best. So last Saturday I was able to race the coolest race I've ever done. It was held in Pescadero, CA which is between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. It is a small town settled between the pacific ocean and the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The thing that attracted me to this race was the fact that it was a mountain top finish. The course was a 27 mile loop that we (Cat 5s) did 1.7 times. It had 3 major climbs, 2 one milers in a row, then a gradual climb up a canyon, then finished with a 2+ mile climb through the redwoods before a nice 8 mile descent back to pescadero.
Then we did the loop again but finishing at the top of the big climb. The scenery was incredible, we started off rolling through coastal grasslands and the big climb went through huge redwoods.

I was excited to race but I was also a tad nervous. People had told us that the Bay Area has one of the most competitive amateur cycling communities in the country and that a "Cat 5" in the bay area may be considered a "Cat 3" elsewhere in the country. In other words, people there are fast and fit. So I was curious to see how I would do. In reality I didn't come to the race completely rested (My relay team took 2nd in the Men's relay at the Vikingman 1/2 ironman the saturday previous, and I did a nice 50 mile climb with around 4k feet of climbing on Tuesday. But the legs were feeling ok. The race started out with a neutral start 5 miles of rollers before those first 2 one miler climbs. The pace wasn't too bad. The club hosting the race was Webcor and they had a around 5 or 6 guys riding in the cat 5s. Usually in the lower categories of racing you don't see too many team tactics being used, so it showed that everyone was a step higher because Webcor tried to control the group. You could tell they were setting on of their people up for the win. We went through the first lap without any significant breakaways. I rode away on the big climb with about 4 other guys but it wasn't too intense and we regrouped on the descent. When we came through pescadero the 2nd time the pace got shifted up a gear. We hit the 2 smaller climbs again going much faster and the group was beginning to dwindle to around 35 riders or so. When we started heading up the canyon we were flying (we had a nice tailwind coming in from the ocean so that helped with the pace). The Webcor riders put in some fast accelerations that shot some more people out the back. We came through the feedzone and started to approach the base of the finishing climb. I had told myself before the race that no matter what situation I was in that I would attack at the base of the climb. We took a nice right hand turn, the gradient kicked up to around 9% and we started climbing. I shifted down a few gears and unleashed an attack along the inside with full pirate fury. It was great, I gapped the group quickly and tried to settle into a pace that I could maintain. I didn't want to wait for Webcor to do something for their guy. As I was trying not to explode my pace dropped a little bit. 2 guys (one of them was a Webcor) bridged up to me and passed me, I tried to stay on their wheels but didn't have the kick in my legs to do so. I could see the "kilometers to go" marks on the sides of the road ticking down and was doing my best to keep myself in the top 3. A third guy bridged up and passed and I tried to maintain as much as I could handle. I could feel the previous week's efforts taking their toll. A 5th guy came up and rode on my wheel. He would come around me, then I would sit on his wheel and come around him. We switched off like this a few times till the climb leveled off a bit towards the top. I decided I didn't want 5th place so I kicked it up a bit and finished strong.

I ended up taking 4th in the cat 5 group. After the finish we had a nice 8 mile cool down descent back to our cars. It was nice to chat with the guys that finished around me. This race was by far the coolest race I've done so far. I wish I had the fire in my legs to hold them off, but ohh well. I'll take 4th in a group like this. I did get a nice alloy Ritchey handlebar for my place though.

If you want to read how Eugena did in her race you can look at her blog here.

More Bay Area riding

2007-06-06T13:00:00.000-06:00

I'm going to try to get out on this ride today or tomorrow. It has around 6,000 ft of climbing and uses some of the course that I hope to be racing this Saturday.

PIctures from today's ride on Calaveras and Sierra road

2007-06-06T00:03:00.000-06:00

Beautiful California

My next ride

2007-06-03T23:47:00.000-06:00

Ahhhhhh....so much better

2007-06-03T23:38:00.001-06:00

There should be a surgeon general's warning about studying for boards....It's terrible for your health. I have 2 weeks full of hanging out with family and friends and lots of biking. I'm stoked.

It will be better 1 week from today...

2007-05-23T10:35:00.000-06:00

Until then its 12 hour days with books and filling my head with the most random diseases....

Great music by 3 great artists

2007-05-01T23:17:00.000-06:00

3 of my favorite artists. G-love, Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter.

A great weekend on the bike

2007-04-25T07:47:00.000-06:00

This last Saturday my friend Nick and I headed out to Lincoln, NE for a road bike race. The race was the Lincoln Plating Spring Cycling classic and is a 2 day 3 stage race. Saturday had a 12.8 time trial (ITT) in the morning with the 38 mile (for the cat 5s) road race in the afternoon. Sunday was a 30 minute criterium, short and fast. Nick and I went out there with the intention on just racing Saturday and to come back sat evening. We drove out Friday, had some good food (seriously there is no good place to eat in kirksville), stayed in a hotel room, and got up sat morning ready to race. The Saturday races were being held at Branched Oak Lake just north-west of town. Going into the weekend had looked at the weather and knew that it was going to be a good temperature and windy. I didn't know it would be REALLY windy. We had a constant 25-30 mph wind out of the south the whole day.

We were a little late getting there and were kind of rushed to get ready for the ITT at 9am (9:04:30 to be exact). We got a nice little warm up and got to the start area. Nick was posted to start right before me (we went at 30s intervals) so it would be nice to use him as my "rabbit". Talking with Thomas earlier in the week he suggested that I "sandbag" the ITT and save my energy for the road race knowing that I wouldn't be going for the overall. So I got to the ITT start, pulled up to the line, someone grabbed the back of my bike so I could clip in, counted down from 10, and I was off. The course was a little hilly, with a good climb at the beginning. We basically headed west out of the park, then took a right turn into a 1.5 or so mile climb then went clockwise around the lake. So we got a combo of tail wind, then a cross wind, then a brutal head wind, then another cross wind. The climb wasn't too bad, for 2 reasons: One, it was only around a 5-6% grade, Two, we had a 25-30mph tail wind. I was able to keep 20-21mph going up the climb.....it was nice. I was riding the ITT pretty well, I decided that I wasn't going to soft pedal around the lake so I decided to catch Nick. I caught up with him right after the climb and just kept on ticking away. The rest of the ITT I just tried to keep a rhythm, knowing that we would be riding the same course for the road race in a few hours. On the south-eastern part of the course we had to cross the dam. This is also where we had a head wind and I kept thinking to myself, "it is going to be brutal in the road race today with this type of wind". I finished the TT and rolled in to the car. When they posted the results an hour or so later I found out that I took a respectable 4th place. Not to bad for not pushing it too much. We kind of relaxed and refueled in prep for the road race.

For the road race we would do 3 laps around the same course. We lined up at the start, right behind the Collegiate racers and got ready to roll. A couple cool things, we had to sign in before the start, and we had a neutral support/wheel car, and we had a mile long neutral start until we made a right turn onto the hill. Kind of felt like a big time race...

We rolled through the neutral start and hit the climb (with the tail wind). A big guy just kind of rode off the front and the rest of the group kept a nice easy pace up the climb. Somehow Nick and I ended up at the front. I didn't mind doing a little work at the beginning but I knew I didn't want to be up there too long especially when we hit the cross/head wind. We finished the climb, took a right turn and headed into the wind. I was still at the front and when I tried to pull off to finish my turn no one would come up to replace nick and i at the front. I would pull off and slow down, the whole group would slow down. I was getting frustrated by the fact that no one would work. I think everyone was too scared of the wind and didn't want to blow their chances by wasting too much energy at the front. I looked at nick, told him we should light up the pack a bit and see if we can catch the guy out in front. I was just hoping to put some fire into the field's legs, get things moving a bit. We came on a small hill, I looked at nick and picked up the pace. It was a good attack, I went hard for about 15 seconds and looked back.......nothing. No response, nick wasn't feeling it so he had dropped back. No one was responding, I had a gap, may as well go catch the guy in front, so I did. I caught up with him on the dam. The wind was brutal, as I came up on him I told him the field was being lazy and we should work together. I don't think he heard a word I said over the sound of the wind. I got in front of him hoping he would pick up on it and get on my wheel, soon however I noticed that he had fallen off my pace. So here I am, 7 or so miles into a 38 mile race, alone out in front in a 25 mph headwind, did I mention that I was alone....may as well go for it and see what happens. I came to the next right turn and was happy to turn that headwind into a cross wind. At this point the field could still see me up the road. I figured that if this is going to have any chance at succeeding I need to mess with their minds a bit. I realized that if I can get out of their sight it will only demoralize them since they will have no idea just how far up I am. So I tried to take advantage of one of my stronger points in cycling and hit the small rollers/hills pretty hard. Slowly increasing the gap. I kept glancing back over my shoulder and seeing the field fade into the distance. This was feeling pretty good. A bit lonely but pretty good nonetheless. I came up to the hill with the tailwind now and hit the climb going almost 30mph. I kept a 20mph speed up the climb and just felt great. Going into the wind and across the dam kept me at around a 16 mph speed, but I tried to make it up on the crosswind sections. The only company I had out there was cat 5 lead car in front of me, a radio car behind me, and the occasional stragglers from the collegiate fields in front of me that would offer some encouragement. So I kept going, trying to ride in my limits but pushing hard to maintain the gap. I finished lap 2 in about 34 minutes, 3.5 minutes quicker then I rode it for the ITT. Last lap, could I pull it off, was the field getting their crap together? I kept my head down and thought of great solo cycling artists like Jens Voight, Vino, and my buddy thomas who soloed for 100+ miles to win a race. I guessed that if I could hold them off enough that they were still out of sight by the time I crossed the dam then I had a good chance of keeping it clear. I rode up the little riser at the end of the dam, looked back over my shoulder......no one. I smiled, shifted down a gear and started cranking towards my first 1st place finish. I came to the turn to the finish line and could hear the race director on the loud speakers announcing my name. It was a cool feeling. Solo victory, and with the field nowhere in sight. I came across the finish, rose a clenched fist, and a smile across my face. I started for a 2 handed victory salute but a big gust of wind right at that moment almost sent me tumbling across the finish line. It was a sweet finish. As I was cooling down I heard the director calling me back to the finish over the loud speakers. I made my way back, got up on the officials stand and conducted a post-race interview! He asked me what it was like out there, why I decided to attack so early, and so on. I told him the legs felt good and the field just didn't respond to my move. After finishing the interview, the next group of 4 riders came cruising across the line for 2nd and 3rd place. Yep, I had time to do a short cool down, and conduct a post-race interview before the next group finished. I crushed them, not that I am super strong I just don't think they expected that anyone would last out there in the wind. A good combination of strength and luck.

They posted the official results a few days later. Since I didn't race the criterium the next day I essentially gave the race away to someone else. It would have been cool to win the overall but looking back it is pretty spezzatura-ish to crush a race then walk away from the overall like I have better things to move on to. The results show me finishing at EXACTLY 2:00:00 (my computer clocked a time of 1:55:45) and the next group finishing at EXACTLY 2:02:00. Seems a little weird to me with the round numbers and all. It felt like I had put more then 2 minutes between when I finished and the next group. Regardless it felt great to go out there see my training pay off. Plus the Moots is pretty much awesome and practically rode itself to a dominating victory.

Below is the power graph from the iBike. It wasn't dialed in right so the wattage reading are off but you can get the idea. The blue line is my power output and the red line is the elevation change. You can see when I attacked around minute 25 as the power spikes then remains elevated as I crank away solo. You can also see the climb on each of the 2 laps.

First race of the season.

2007-04-03T15:18:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday I woke up at 4am to drive 4 hours to Hillsboro, Il (I know kirksville is in the middle of nowhere, especially in the athletic/outdoor world). I've been eyeing the Hillsboro-Roubaix road race since last year so I made it a point to go race. It was my first race of the year and I was pretty excited. My friend Brian, who is just settling into road biking, decided to come along and join me. So here is the break down:

0430-0930-Drive, yeah nothing special here

0930-Arrive at the race start, check in, get my bike ready and do a nice 3-4 mile warm up ride

1045- Most of the racers do a ceremonial lap around town with the race organizer. It also gave us a chance to scout the finishing mile or two of the race.

1115-Start lining up for the race and watching the cat 1/2, 3s take off

1130-Our field starts (I decided to race the Cat 4/5 field). Our field would do two 22 mile loops on these really cool county roads. Below is the profile of the whole race taken from a friend's garmin:
We started off really quick out of the gun and at first I wasn't sure if I could hold a 25-27mph pace the whole race. Once we got about 4 miles in the group settled down a bit. We ended up doing the whole 44 mile race in almost exactly 2 hours so a 22 mph avg isn't too bad. The first lap was pretty conservative in terms of how I was riding. I sat most of the time in a great position in the front 10-12 riders, conserving my energy and not working when I didn't need to. There were a couple short steep hills that I felt really good on the first lap. The peak right in the middle of the profile above is the feed zone hill followed by another short steep climb. The first lap the feed zone hill was "neutral" meaning that it is common courtesy not to attack then. The second time it was fair game. The first loop was pretty uneventful, someone told me that there was a crash but it was towards the back of the pack so I didn't see it. It was the second lap that things began to pick up.

One hour later:

Brian took this picture as the field came through the start/finish for the beginning of the second lap (I'm in the sweet light blue pirate kit). About 5 miles into the 2nd lap there was a nice little climb that a few of us went off the front. There was maybe 6 of us and we had a nice little gap on the rest of the group. Me and another guy kept telling the small group that we had a gap and we need to work and open it up a bit more. No one else really seemed too interested so we got pulled back in pretty quickly. It was a nice little breakaway for a mile or so. During most of the day there was a pretty strong wind out of the south, and it seemed to get stronger as the race went on. The last 9 miles or so the course took a northeast course which meant that we had a tail/cross wind, but in the last 4 miles the course turned due east which meant that the tail wind became a cross wind. I figured that the deciding factor would be the climbs by the feed zone (once you got over the 150 foot climb it was only one mile to the finish) so I wanted to get in a good position going into the cross wind section. The field hit that turn into the cross wind going pretty quickly. I dropped a few positions in that turn and had to spend a bunch of energy fighting the wind to stay on the end of the front eschelon or about 15 riders. I didn't look back but someone told me that when we hit the cross wind the field blew apart. I was lucky to at least be in the front eschelon. I had spent so much energy that when we hit those climbs 1 mile from the finish I didn't have a ton of reserve left. I climbed the 150 vertical feet as hard as I could and gained a few spots. The finish was pretty cool, you crested the climb, had a nice quick downhill onto 1/2 mile of brick road (hence the Roubaix reference in the name), then the finish. I passed a couple more people on the brick and tried to hold it to the end. I ended up finishing 9th in the 4/5s (I happened to be the top cat 5 in the 4/5s also).

The race was a lot of fun, the roads had this cool northern france/belgium feel to them. I am pretty happy with my effort, if I could have kept a better position going into that corner into the cross wind I maybe could have broken top 5 but oh well. It was nice racing and being able to feel some of my work over the winter paying off.

Next up: I just signed up for a cool race in Lincoln, NB on April 21st. It has a 12 mile TT on sat followed by a road race. It should be a lot of fun.

off to the races

2007-03-29T21:49:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow I head out for a race in Lincoln's state next door. I'll post a recap by Monday... I hope to break some legs.

photo courtesy of Graham Watson (check him out, his photos are amazing...)

such a sweet spring break

2007-03-25T09:39:00.000-06:00

For some reason this last quarter of school was really tough. Maybe it was the fact that we had 10 classes to juggle, maybe it was that we were typically in class 7 hours a day then had to go home (in the dark usually, thank you mr winter) and study all that material. Regardless I was so ready for our break. Eugena and I had planned a sweet trip for spring break so here it is:
Friday March 9th: I finished my last final around 11am and headed home to get the car ready (2 road bikes and 2 mountain bike on top of our subaru is a beautiful site), and headed out. We were on our way to Lawrence, KS for the Devils Revenge Duathlon. We camped at the state park that evening and the next morning got up ready to race.

Saturday March 10th: The Duathlon started with a 2 mile trail run then a 10 mile mountain bike ride, and finished with another 2 mile trail run. The day was beautiful, a nice sunny 60 degrees at the start. There was about 115 racers in a mass start that included about 1/3 mile of pavement before getting on the trails. I felt good on the first run but had a little lateral knee pain in my right knee towards the end of the run. I hit the bike portion ready to have a great ride. I was riding the Rig and had been concerned about the single speed being a little limiting in terms of not having a big enough gear to go fast. I talked to one of the race organizers that morning who was also riding a Rig and he assured me that the trails were built for a single speed. Turns out he was right. There was just enough small short climbs and enough rocks that the trail was perfect for the Rig. I was having a blast and riding pretty well. The mtb ride was 10 miles but was 2x5 mile loops. The first loop I found myself not being able to find a good rhythm. But the second lap was awesome, I had a good beat in my head and felt like I was flying. Luckily the race had spread out enough by then that by the second mtb lap I hardly needed to pass any other racers. I came into the last run transition in pretty good shape. I counted only 7 other mtn bikes as I was changing into my running shoes. As I started the last run that slight knee pain quickly turned into a full blown "screwdriver shoved in my knee" type of pain. "Deal with it" I told myself and hobbled the 2 mile run. Unfortunately all the hard work I did on the bike was lost as I was passed by about 3 or 4 people on the run. When I finished I ended up 13th overall and 5th in my age group. Not to bad for a single speed and on a busted knee (this puts my marathon plans in a bit of a bind, more to come on that....).
Eugena on the other hand was pretty much awesome. She had a good run and a great bike and took the honors of 1st place overall female. Yeah, she pretty much rocks. I'll let her describe her own race on her blog.

Here is a blip from the race website, "Eugena Gunderson made the trip from Kirksville, MO payoff with the Overall women's title in 2:03:39. Eugena was actually on the way to Colorado for spring break and "can really use her cash winnings" to enjoy her trip out west more." We left for the rockies from there and made it to Denver where we decided to call it a day and stay with some freinds for the night.

Sunday March 11th: We got into SLC around 1 in the afternoon after a verky bleary drive through Wyoming. It was Eugena's birthday so that evening we had my family and some close friends over for dinner for a little get together. Pretty relaxed and low key.

Monday March 12th: I headed out for a ride with my dad in the morning and then went to the shop to get eugie fitted for her Moots. 8 weeks from March 12th! We then headed down to Moab with some cafe rio in our bellies. On our way into town we stopped to get in a short ride at Klondike Bluffs. It was a nice short ride and a good intro (reminder) to riding on sandstone. We got at spot on some BLM campground along highway 128 and the Colorado river (Drinks canyon).

Tuesday March 13th: My mom and dad came down for a couple days so we hit slickrock tuesday morning. The three of us (captain, eugie and I) hit the 2 mile practice loop with boudreaux before dropping the dog off with my mom and taking off on the full loop. It's been years since I have ridden slickrock but I don't think I've ever had as much fun as riding it on the Rig, plus it was a great workout. Eugena did awesome once she got used to riding on the sandstone hills. We had a great time out there. No one got injured, it was perfect weather (about 70 deg and sunny), and we were all challenged trying to clean some of the moves. It was so nice to be back riding on slickrock. I have missed the mountain biking there. It will be good to be back in the state by this August and to be able to take advantage of the desert some more.

Wed March 14th: Today we had a sweet road ride in store. I've always thought it would be incredible to ride through the Arches Natl park, so we did. We left from Moab around 8 am (a little chilly start) and found ourselves soon climbing a nice 2-3 mile climb up into the park. Unfortunately we didn't bring a camera on the road ride, but I have to say it was one of the most scenic and incredible road rides I've even done. To be riding next to giant sandstone walls and pillars was just beautiful. The whole ride was an out n'back route around 50 miles. The profile includes 3 climbs on the way out and 2 climbs on the way back....exactly what I love. It was awesome.

Thursday March 15th: We were supposed to ride porcupine rim today but I injured my knee slightly during the previous day's ride. I must have strained my vastus medialus (part of your quadriceps). Eugena and I were pretty bummed that we didn't ride porcupine but we decided that it was best to play it safe. Porcupine rim is a 21 mile point to point that is pretty much in the middle of the desert. We figured that if my knee were to get worse it could turn into a 15 mile hobble back to the car. So kind of dejectedly we packed up and decided to head up to SLC for our last couple days.

Friday March 16th: We hung around the house a bit and got ready for a road ride. We rode the prison loop and stopped by the Jordan "Beetdigger" high school lacrosse tournament. It was nice for eugena to be able to see a bunch of the girls that she coached when we lived in utah.

Saturday and Sunday: Diving across the bleak and dreary plains of Wyoming and Nebraska...pretty exciting huh?

It was so good to get out of kirksville and away from school and reconnect with eugena. The southern Utah desert is so amazing and we're pretty excited to be moving closer this summer. There is something that is special and healing about this part of the world. I've always enjoyed spending time in Utah desert country and this break renewed that love. More pictures of our trip can be found here.

This is pretty funny

2007-02-17T21:04:00.001-07:00

What's wrong with our dog?

2007-01-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

I don't write much about Kiowa here. Mostly because she is a great, well behaved, good natured, adorable Malamute. She decided this week to turn crazy on us. It began last saturday when eugena and I took her for a 8 mile run (poor thing...). She was exhausted after the run like she usually is and slept all afternoon. We decided to head down to columbia that evening to meet paul and kristi for thai food. We were only going to be gone a few hours so we dog proofed the house and left her sleeping. When we came home hours later (longer than we thought due to a blizzardesque snow storm) she had managed to tear the place apart. Maybe she was worried about us driving in the storm, maybe she woke up from her exercise induced coma and panicked that noone was home. Regardless she freaked out and tore down and demolished 2 sets of blinds (so she could look out the windows), kicked open the door to the back room, and spread trash all over the house. Since that evening she has decided to keep up with the trash spreading tradition and has somehow managed to out-smart and out-muscle our devices to keep her out of the trash. Today when I came home (she was only alone for about an hour and a half) she got into the back room where the trash was and then closed the door on herself, locking herself in the room with the trash and her dog treats (which she has found and actually remembers the location). So when I came home from spinning, instead of a excited, furry (now crazy) malamute greeting me, I had silence. The first thing that went through my head was that someone broke in the house and either took her (she's probably the most attractive item we possess) or let her out of the house. I realized that she may be in the back room, opened the door and there she was, caught red-pawed. She didn't even make a noise when she heard me come home. Maybe she realized how busted she was and was thinking of a way out of it. I actually think she was just confused. This was the third day in a row of her trash-divnig and we are still finding pieces of old torillas scattered around the house. I can't imagine she was going to remember where she put all her little stashes of tortillas and was acutally going to go back for them someday.

The West got snow, we got ice

2007-01-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

So the Midwest got slammed with some nasty wintry weather this last weekend. Luckily Kirksville missed the worst part of the storm. We did get some freezing rain on sat and Sunday, followed by a bit of snow Monday night. Today though was nice and sunny, albeit cold (-1 deg F when I woke up at 0730 this morning), everything is covered in a thin layer of ice. The sun was shining, blue bird sky, and everything was shimmering. It was truly beautiful. Eugena got out to take some cool pictures of the incredibly beautiful scene while I was in class for 7 hours today. Check them out here.

A cool experience

2007-01-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started road biking I have always wanted to get my VO2 Max tested. If you don't know VO2 Max is the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can take up from the air around you and use to help your muscles make energy. Getting a VO2 max tested doesn't really help in designing specific training plans but is nice to know what your endurance capability is. One website that I was looking at put it this way,
"Top endurance athletes (eg: marathon runners) usually have a very high VO2 Max, usually measuring around 70 ml/kg/min. The average person has a VO2 Max of around 35 ml/kg/min. "

People like Lance Armstrong and other ultra super-human athletes usually have a VO2 in the 80s or low 90s.
So yesterday I finally got a chance to get my VO2 done. We have a good friend Cassie who is studying Exercise Science at Truman State University here in town. She arranged it with a professor that she works with to come up to their lab yesterday afternoon. Here is a good website about VO2 testing with a picture of what the test looks like (except I was on a bike and not a treadmill). The test was pretty short, only about 7 min of real work, but with a warm up and cool down took around 45 minutes. The point is to exercise the subject to exhaustion so it gets pretty strenuous. It was tough, not really a "fun" experience although it was really cool to push myself that hard and see what I can do. Well, I wasn't dissapointed. I got a good result that I am happy with. The professor wants me to come back in a couple months to demo a real test for his students so it will be cool to see if I will make any improvment in my max in the next couple months. Hopefully I can use this capacity to do well in some races this year...

The full report:

Finally a little perspective

2007-01-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went on a ride with Paul and Brian after we got out of class (I love days when we only have 4 hours of lecture). We only had about 2 hrs so we headed out on the K loop. Brian just got his road bike built up and he has a Garmin edge 305, which is a piece of bike wizardy. Its the ultimate bike computer/GPS unit. Anyway Brian put the ride up on this really cool web based application called motion based. Check it out here. The coolest thing about this is that I can look at the profiles and maps of rides that I've been doing for a year and a half. This application is so cool, a data geek's dream. You can plot the distance vs. heart rate, gradient, elevation, speed and all sorts of other things. If you click on the "player" tab on the right side you can see our ride in 3x (you can change the speed) with actual speeds, elevations, and the whole works. I love cool technology, especially when it has to do with bike stuff.

Amazing trial biker

2007-01-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Check out this amazing rider...

A nice December ride

2006-12-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I headed out to Thousand Hills Lake for a nice mountain bike ride with my wife Eugena, our dog Kiowa, Jory, and Brian. We were riding the whole trail which is a point to point ride of about 13 miles. It was great weather, the trail was a little muddy which made it a bit slower rolling then usual. The temp was around the high 50s so it made for great weather. I am absolutely loving the Rig, which has been affectionately named "Vader" by a friend. I love the 29 inch wheels, and am falling for the single speed thing. I have been able to ride parts of the trail and clean moves that I couldn't do on my other mtn bike, and all in one gear. The big wheels get moving and just roll over everything.

About 2/3 out on the trail there is a campground that sits on top of a hill between 2 ravines. We stopped for a bite to eat and I noticed a nice band of bedrock on the other side of one ravine. I made the off hand comment to Brian (who used to race motocross and is currently riding the trail on a big 38 lb Vagrant free ride bike, pic here) that he should drop it. The drop was about 6-7 ft and the run out was steep and ended abruptly in a ravine filled with dead logs. Brian is a tough guy so he dropped it, and miracously came out relativly unscathed. He did crash though, and it was a magnificent spill, triple rag dog style.

Shout Out to Mothers

2006-12-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

Hi Mom E. and Mom G.

snow ride

2006-12-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

Look, the snow isn't all that bad in the midwest. Sure you can't walk out your door and go ski incredible powder on spectacular mountains like Utah. But you can still have a good time with great friends. Enjoy...

Turkey day riding and freezing rain

2006-11-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

I guess it had to arrive eventually. The cold front that dumped a ton of snow on the rockies has hit Kirksville, but instead of nice pristine, clean, beautiful snow we get freezing rain. The temp when I left my house this night was around 4 deg F with the wind chill. Nice huh? At least Eugena, Kiowa and I had a nice warm vacation over the thanksgiving break. I had a week off of school as it was between quarters and instead of driving back to slc or cali for a dinner, we headed down to the Ozarks for a mountain biking trip. We decided to ride the Berryman trail in southeast Missouri. It was noted by Bicycling Magazine and called "the best singletrack East of the Rockies and West of the Appalachians." It defiantly lived up to it's reputation. It is a 24mile loop and a ton of fun. We ended up getting down there Thursday morning and went for a nice 7 mile ride on the Courtois section of The Ozark Trail. We were camping at the Berryman campground and had the whole campground to ourselves. Friday morning the weather was perfect, 65 deg, sunny and awesome, so we geared up to ride the 24 mile Berryman trail. We started at about 10:30 am and after 45 minutes ended up riding with a solo rider down from st. louis. At the 7 mile point Kiowa was starting to really drag so we decided that she wasn't going to make the whole 24 miles before dark. We planned a shortcut the would put us at about 16miles to get back to the campground. We ended up finishing around 3:30 pm or so (Kiowa has only one speed when she gets tired, and it isn't very fast). The trail lived up to all our expectations. It is great tight singletrack. You have to be on your guard constantly because of all the leaves that cover the ground. You can't really tell what is under the leaves. Parts of the trail are really fast and smooth and parts are loaded with rocks and roots. You just never know what you're getting. We both had some good spills but came out relatively unscathed. Eugena and I decided that we want to continue this proud tradition of heritage of being active (camping, biking, backpacking, etc) on Thanksgiving. What better way to celebrate gluttony then by not being gluttonous? We had a good time and very much enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner of Salmon and vegetables tin foil dinners. They were excellent...

Find more pics of the trip and others here.

the joys of fall

2006-11-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

kiowa likes leaves... you can see the rest here

I retract what I said in the last post

2006-11-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

So after Friday's mountain bike ride with eugena, cathy, kiowa, and halley (cathy's super fast greyhound) we found a little surprise on kiowa's underside right in the middle of a blood meal:

So now I am at a dilemma: Do I continue to ride in the woods (which is my seasonal exercise) or do I put it off until these little buggers finally die...
The weather is unseasonablly warm right now so maybe the ticks decided they'd make a comeback. I kind of wish it would get cold again so I wouldn't have to worry about this. As for now, Erlichiosis here we come....

Ahhhhh, at last no ticks...

2006-10-28T21:52:00.000-06:00

So the first frost in Missouri is a big deal for me. This is because the first time the temp drops below freezing all the ticks, spiders and chiggers die. All summer I am hesitant to get out in the woods because of the obscene amounts of small bugs that crawl and embed themselves in you skin. I don't really enjoy the feeling of picking a small insect out of my skin in the midst of it's blood meal. Plus you add on the fact that I've just finished studying in school the MANY diseases that ticks carry (Rocky mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, Tularemia, Erlichiosis, Anaplasmosis, and Relapsing fever to name a few). Needless to say, I love it when we get the first frost, I finally get back out in the woods without hesitations and the post hike tick checks in the shower. A couple weeks ago (after the frost) I went mountain biking around Thousand Hills Lake. I have to admit I have been a complete idiot for neglecting this trail for a whole year. It is an excellent 13 miles of pure singletrack. I can't believe it took me this long to get out there. So now I have the mountain biking bug again. It comes at a good time because I need a break from the road bike before I start hitting the trainer next month. So, I've been out on the trail as much as I can in an effort to use this short window of time between the death of the bugs but before the trail gets too wet and muddy to ride. I have been riding the trail from my house which makes the ride around 25 miles round trip (the 13 miles around the lake is a point to point). I got excited again tonight when I found some maps to another conservation area south of town which looks like it houses around 20 miles of trail. Plus we bought Eugena a good mountain bike (2002 Gary Fisher Sugar 3+). She is excited to give mountain biking another shot after 3 or 4 tainted and injurious attempts with my father, my brothers and I (my dad picks hard trails for the family mtb trips). This is turning out to be a good way to keep my fitness up as I move into the winter training season. It's great to get out on the trail and not see a single person the whole 13 miles. It's a nice release from the stress of school. Something to look forward to, Thomas asked if I was interested in doing an on 8 hour adventure race Dec 2nd in Castlewood park outside of St. Louis. I though I might as well, stay posted....

waiting, patiently waiting

2006-10-04T21:59:00.000-06:00

So a few days ago I challenged my little brother kellen (1/2 inch shorter) to a marathon dual. The thing is that eugie is running a marathon next april with a couple of our friends. They want me to run also, (I am not sure what the Moots thinks about all this blasphemy yet) so I need some good motivation. I decided that a good brotherly duel would do it (all in good spirits of course). So I challenged him. He posted the challenge on his blog and opened it up for discussion from his readers. He wasn't ready for what was to follow. He got a record number of comments, mostly from some arrogant jerk name "anonymous". So now he is waiting for Mr/Mrs. Anonymous to reveal his/her identity before he answers the challenge. I think you should visit his blog (kellengunderson.blogspot.com) and encourage him to respond to the challenge regardless of who this sissy "anonymous" is. I need an answer so I can begin procrastinating training.

I don't know what I was thinking

2006-10-01T21:33:00.000-06:00

So on Saturday a student organization here on campus called PSR (Physicians for Social Responsibility) put on a 5k run. For some reason I decided I was going to run. Maybe it was because I have a bunch of friends that organized the event, maybe it was because it was being held on the nature trail behind the school that I helped develop. For what ever reason I am still not sure if I enjoyed it. The run was about 2 miles on road/paved bike path and the rest on the trail. There were probably 40-50 people doing the 5k and the 1 mile walk. I guess I kind of just wanted to see how I would do. People keep telling me that I have the perfect build for a long distance runner, and while 5k certainly isn't considered long distance I thought I would give it a shot. When I told Eugena that I was running she first laughed then mocked....and that was probably logical response. I think this year I may have ran maybe 5 times, with the longest run being about a 7 miler. So I'm not a runner, big deal. It hasn't caught my attention yet. So to get to the point I ran the race and did the 5k in 20:45. So not too bad, I took 5th overall and 2nd in my age division. Now eugena is trying to convince me to train and run a marathon at the end of April 07 in Kentucky. We'll see, I'm still not conviced I like this, or I'm that good at it. Plus what would the Moots think if he/she (haven't decided yet on the gender) saw me running...

A word from the West

2006-09-15T20:49:00.000-06:00

Take

Add

with a touch of

and you get one incredible ride...

Last Saturday my father "Captain", my elder brother Jansen, my younger and 1/2 inch shorter brother Kellen and a few other pirates rode LOTOJA (www.lotojaclassic.com). LOTOJA is a road race that takes a bunch of money from 1,000 suckers and makes them sit on an uncomfortable saddle for 12 hours or 206 miles (which ever comes first) while they ride their bikes from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY. First and foremost I must say that we were by far the most stylish riders in the whole field. In fact the Salt Sea Pirates won the much coveted but poorly advertised "Style Beyond Measure" classification. We didn't only win, we crushed everyone else in this "race within the race". It was humiliating the way the other riders folded under our superior style (the way Lance's rivals had already given up winning the Tour 3 months before it started...), there was no competition. I mean look at us, matching 2006 Salt Sea Pirates kits (credit goes to Jansen for designing the sweetest looking kits in the lower 48), Matching Bell Sweep Helmets (by far the best and coolest helmet ever molded, and the icing on the cake...brand new matching Moots Compact bikes with full Dura Ace/FSA build and bling saddles (see photo above). We were oozing style ala Mario Cipollini.

We started off at 6:57AM and began our ride with a chilly but not freezing ride through the fog filled Logan valley. The first part of the ride was pretty uneventful except for a small crash in our 50 person peloton, no problems for us. After the first feed zone in Preston, ID we started the climbing (all in all about 6500 ft of climbing). The climbs were beautiful. We were riding at a pace that allowed me to soak in the absolute beauty of the mountains. We got over the first pass in good shape, and made our way into Montpelier for the 3rd feed zone. After refueling with the awesome support of my Mother (she did great all day getting us the stuff we needed to keep our legs moving fast) we started climbing again up and over Geneva Summit and then Salt River pass (the highest point at LOTOJA at 7,630 ft. I took the honors of KOM (King of the Mountain) amongst the Pirates after bridging up to Jansen and Bryan from a over a 1/4 mile deficit (It was sweet). Once we got up and over the passes it was pretty much smooth sailing. We had some great descents and hit the flats feeling great. Once we got to Alpine Junction we knew we were practically there, only 46miles to go...Luckily we had a sweet tailwind heading up Snake River Canyon. We hooked up with a good group of 15 or so and were just flying up the canyon, making great time. One of the coolest moments of the whole day came when we were riding with the group following the Snake River. We were riding at about 16-17 mph. I knew that the Salt Sea Pirates could be going faster than that, so we sent the team to the front of the group an upped the pace to 19-20. It brought a tear to my eye seeing 5 Salt Sea Pirates at the front of the group controlling the pace. Riding into Jackson was absolutely beautiful, the Tetons looked gorgeous. As we were approaching Jackson looked down at my bike computer which read 194 miles and realized that the race organizers have a nasty sense of humor. The race actually ends in Teton Village, which is about 10 miles north of Jackson. I guess LOTOTV just doesn't have the same ring to it. We crossed the finish line (if you don't believe me)
with 11hr38min of ride time and a total official time of 12hr30min (we stopped in the feed zones to refuel instead of grabbing the food and keeping going).

All in all we had a great time. The Salt Sea Pirates also sponsored a relay team the did great. Special props go out to Corey, Maggie, and Eugena for tearing it up on the relay team. In fact Eugena deserves special praises for her super human effort (no EPO or exogenous testosterone involved). Not only did she ride the relay legs with the most of the climbs (about 67 miles) but then she hopped on the back of Tony Sieverts tandem (his daughters who were alternating riding with him on the back were completely wasted by the 6th feed zone), and rode the last 46 miles into Jackson. We were with them when Eugena hopped on at feed zone 6 and didn't see them until the finish. Yeah, I know what you are thinking...Eugena is incredible.

When all is said and done I had a great time. Things were a little tense when we first started riding but once we got the jitters out everything was good. I felt great at the end of the race and still had gas in the tank. In fact Jansen and I sprinted it out at the end (I was boxed in by some guy who had no idea that two Pirates were sprinting for bragging rights). I am making an official decleration of intention right now: I intend to ride LOTOJA next year in a sub 10h30min time (including feeds). There now it is official. Sure I was in the saddle for 12 hours, sick of eating clif shot bloks (which are manna on the bike), numb for 24 hours and craving chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but it was all worth it. The scenery, hanging out with my family, seeing my awesome wife tear it up, and being able to ride the Moots made it all worth it.

keep riding,
seth
PS. I'll post pics from the ride once I get them on my computer.
Pics from other people:
Here
and here
Brian, Jansen, and Captain
a good pirate shot
more pirates

A new year, a new quarter, a new bike, and a new entry

2006-08-31T17:42:00.000-06:00

So, it's been a while since I posted a entry on the blog. Likely I have lost the 2 readers that I did have so I assume I am starting fresh. So on Sunday I celebrated my 26th birthday. I must tell you that so far it has been everything that I had thought it would be.....yeah, nothing has changed. Which is a good thing because I have a pretty sweet life. My wonderful wife and I also celebrated our 4th year anniversary on the 17th. And to top an already wonderful day I also received the Moots that day. Yes UPS had the vision to delay the shipment so that it would arrive on my anniversary. I believe UPS must have been trying to sabotage my marriage as such a delivery on that day would test my ability to not ignore my wife and spend all my time with the new bike. Needless to say UPS did not prevail (side note: our UPS delivery guy deserves the title of "completely awesome" simply because he is the one who sold us our greatest investment ever: the set of 3 lockers...). On the topic of the Moots, I don't quite know how to explain the sweetness of the ride. It's like a highly purified drop of speed, finesse, and panache was engrained in every molecule of titanium in that frame. I keep telling everyone, "It rides like a dream..." Its smooth on the road, it climbs well, and it descends like a banshee, plus it is ozzing style. Since it's arrival on the 17th I have put a solid 430 miles on the Moots, and yes, it still rides like a dream. The Moots and I are preparing for a 206 mile race from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY with my Father (The Captain), Jansen, and Kellen. We will all be riding brand new Moots, and although we may not ride very quickly (especially the last 100 miles or so) we will be riding with massive amounts of style. You see, we will be utilizing a new technology called, "Style Propulsion System" (SPS), patents pending. I will definatly be writing another entry before and after the race.
Along with the new addition to the bike part of our family, I officially turned over the first year of medical school. As of last friday I became a 2nd year medical student. This is vaguely important because: 1) I now get to begin stressing out about the first step of boards (which I will take in may of june). 2) A new class of students arrived so it's slightly amusing and satisfying to see them stress about Anatomy, Histology, Biochemisty and all those other 1st year classes, while I sit back and stress about Pathology, Priciples of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Pharmacology, Principles of Surgery, and all the 2nd year classes that really DO matter when it comes to the everyday practice of medicine. 3) I have demolished the all time record for debt, as my debt load double with another tuition payment for the year.

But when I look at all this, it really is nice because it means that I made it through the first year of med school and I am one year closer to being able to interact and treat patients, and help them on their way to health. This is assuming of course that I make it though all 206 miles of LOTOJA in one piece...

A lot to say about an incredible experience

2006-07-15T16:39:00.000-06:00

Hey, I must apologize for taking so long to get this entry done and taken care of. It's been almost a month since I got back from India. The trip was incredible. Not only did we get to see a beautiful country but I was able to be a part of a group that saw and helped amost 2200 patients. I began by spending almost 24 hours on the plane to get to New Dehli. Once there I was able to sleep for about 3 hours before meeting the rest of the team in the morning for a 12 hour bus ride to northern India. We began our "real" trip in a city of about 500,000 called Shimla. It's a beautiful city set up on the mountainside. We spend the night in Shimla and set out the next morning on another 10-12 hour drive to the first clinic site: Kafnu. We had 3 days of clinic planned there and during that we saw 800+ patients. The people there were kind and it was a pleasure to help them with their health problems. Pretty much everyone in the village and the surrounding villages came to be seen. After Kafnu we had a rest day in a small Himalayan not far from the Chinese (Tibetan) border. We were able to do some trekking into a small village called Chitkul that had a sweet touch of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Hinduism. Our trip took us next into the Spiti valley. Up to this point in the trip we had been in lush green valleys and in the "foothills" of the Himalayas. Now we were entering the Spiti valley, arid and spectacular. We spent 2 very busy days in Nako, a small charming village at 12,000 ft. Nako was probably my favorite village during the whole trip. The people there were amazing. Secluded at this altitude and pretty much self-sustaining. As a thank you gesture the village head arranged for 8 of the villages to perform traditional dancing for us on our last night after dinner. Leaving Nako was hard, we worked extremely hard but the people there were so grateful for having us there to help them. It was interesting to see the features of the locals change as we entered the Spiti valley. In Kafnu and the Sutlej river valley the people looked "Indian" but in Spiti the people were very Tibetan looking. This region actually used to be part of the Tibetan kingdom before India took it over. We are almost lucky they did because in doing so it preserved a lot of the Tibetan culture and religion from the Chinese take over. Our next stop was a cool village called Tabo. Tabo's coolest feature was a Buddhist monestary that was build in 996 A.D. The complex consists of the monestary and 9 temples. They were beautiful and we were able to attend the daily prayer sessions that the monks did. Listening to them chant is one of the most relaxing things I have ever done. We had 2 days of clinic in Tabo and also visited an incredible monestary in Danhkar. We had 2 more clinic sites in some reallly cool villages. Besides being able to treat and see almost 2200 people in 9 days I was able to experience this incredible culture first hand. I gained a deeper understanding and appreciation of what Tibetan refugees have had to go through. It's utterly amazing how these people who are living at altitudes upwards of 14,000 ft live on a day to day basis. They are so strong, caring and honest. Being able to travel to the other side of the world I am grateful to the people that sponosored me financially to help me go on this trip. I am grateful for my always supporting wife who encouraged me to go on this trip. I am not sure if I can fully express how amazing this trip was. It imporved my skills as a student physician and planted a seed in me for future trips.

I need a nap....

2006-05-26T11:38:00.000-06:00

Finally, it's over....for now. This morning I had my last final of what is considered my first year of medical school. Now we have about 2 months off from classes and tests. It's going to be nice not having to wake up at 5:00 AM and not having to stress about 2-3 tests/quizzes per week. Although these next couple months won't be full of a lot of down time. One week from today I will be leaving for India as part of the medical trip that I mentioned earlier this year. Now that I have some time to think about it I'm getting really excited. Next friday I leave Atlanta, GA to fly to Frankfurt, Germany then on to New Delhi, India. I get in at 12:30 AM in Delhi, then I have to meet the team at 5:00 AM to ride a bus to Shimla 10 hours north-east. From there we get in jeeps and drive up into the Himalayan range. Sounds pretty cool huh? I'll have a bunch of pics to post when I get back. So this week is all about spending time with eugena, riding my bike (hasn't been touched in 2 weeks) and getting ready for the trip. While I'm gone my lovely wife eugena is going to be having quite the adventure of her own doing a 10-12 day road bike bonanza in northern Cali and southern Oregon with her grandparents and mom as a full support crew. Yes, I am a little jealous... We both rendez--vous back in Utah for the MS 150 on June 24th. I fly in the night of the 23rd pretty much straight from India (where I definitely won't be riding my bike), then I need to ride 100 miles the next day. We'll see how that goes. At least my hematocrit will be pretty high. After that we get about 10 days to do nothing, but we'll probabaly end up in southern utah camping. I am amazed how much I miss the desert, I had it too good while we lived in utah. After that I need to get back to MO to report for my summer preceptorship. I will be spending 2 weeks in Lexington, MO with a family practice physician. It's kind of our first real clinical experience. It should be great.
This first year of school has been interesting. At times I have been completely miserable and not wanting to hear, read, listen, or think about anything that has to do with medicine. Other times I get so excited about being a physician that I get a bit giddy. All in all it's been difficult but rewarding. I still havn't figured out how on earth I am going to remember all this stuff one day when I will acutally have my own patients. All in it's own dues time I guess. As for now I need to figure out how to stop thinking about the 200+ bugs and their diseases I had to learn for my Medical Microbioloy final this morning. I will say one thing, after having learned about all 200 or so bugs and the diseases they cause, I have never been so cautious about what I put in my mouth and have never been so good about washing my hands... As for now I think I may have actually survived my first year of medical school. I think I deserve a nap...

SSP squad preview for 2006 LOTOJA

2006-05-04T17:34:00.000-06:00

So it's official, a squad of 4-5 Salt Sea Pirates (saltseapirates.blogspot.com) will make a showing a the 2006 LOTOJA (it's a bike race from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY and so you don't have to look it up on google maps its 206 miles...). And to answer the imminent question, THE Sky Captain will be riding, so you can be waiting at the finish in Jackson to shower him with flowers and gifts. A small group of Salt Sea Pirates attempted to complete the whole LOTOJA in 2005 but were thwarted from riding the complete 206 miles by snow, hail, wind, rain and lack of any real style. Fresh off the 2006 MS 150 and with the Captain, Mr. Fabulous, K-dawg and yours truly on the line up this years edition of the LOTOJA classic should be one that will go down in the annals of Salt Sea Pirate history.

Yesterday I only got 10 miles in, and today and tomorrow are devoted to school so no ride! Saturday I am heading out with a fast surgical resident (fast on the bike, not with the knife...) to do an epic 50-60 miler (149-DO loop to K and back through Yarrow). It should be something to write about later. Stay tuned to see how I do on my first big ride of the season (I know, a little late but what can I do...).

UG the marathoner

2006-05-01T17:38:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday (April 29th) my wife Eugena ran her very first marathon. The event she chose for her entrance into the world of long distance running was the Nashville Country Music Marathon. For a detailed and humorous explanation as to why this particular marathon check out her blog at eugenagunderson.blogspot.com. She ran a great race. Her finishing time was 4:43:48, an excellent time for her first marathon. She didn't have any problems during the race and the weather was a great 70 degrees and overcast. She has been quite sore and stiff in these days following the race but for that amount of stress that your body goes through to run 26.2 miles a little post-exercise fatigue is to be expected. The picture is of us after the race standing on a bridge over the Cumberland River with downtown in the background. We had a great time, Eugena ran a great race and accomplished an incredible goal, I'm so proud of her.

Looking ahead 4.5 months to our next big challenge.....I signed up to ride the LOTOJA race on September 9th (www.lotojaclassic.com). The race is a 206 mile bike race from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY. I'll be riding it with my father (the one, the only Sky Captain) and two of my brothers (Cletus and Ricky Bobby). I'm pretty stoked for the ride but extremely worried at the same time about fitting in the training miles between my spending time with my wife and dog, medical school, a 3-week international medical trip this summer, a 2-week preceptorship with a doc in Kansas City, and all the other little things that seem to get in the way. I'll try to keep you updated as I progress with the training. Today I fit in a quicky of 19 miles around the lake outside of town, not too bad for a short little ride.

a good ole midwestern storm

2006-03-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

As you may know already the midwest got some pretty bad weather this past weekend. Saturday was glorious at 73 degrees and sunny. I came to find out that this well deserved weather only made the storm making it's way across the rockies madder. Sunday was mostly normal except that the last 2 hours of church was cancelled so people could go home and prepare for any potential weather headed our way. Another reason they cancelled the last part of church was because our ward boundaries are quite large and some people travel quite a distance to get home. The Bishop didn't want these people having to travel in potentially bad weather.

There is a man in our ward who lives in Unionville which is about 45 miles northwest of Kirksville. He doesn't have a car so various members of the ward pitch in to pick him up and take him home from church. Sunday was my week to take Dave home but the weather was too sketchy to make the drive right after church. We went back to our house and waited for a few hours keeping an eye on the weather (via nws.noaa.gov, a great resource). Some of the weather looked like it was passing so we decided to make a go for it. We had also read that it was going to get worse as the day progressed and we figured we would rather make this trip in full daylight. Driving there wasn't a problem but as we approached the town there was a rather scary looking cloud hovering overhead. As we pulled in it became very dark, I realised that we needed to drop Dave off and get out of there as soon as possible. We practically kicked him out the door and took off. As we pulled into the town square so we could get onto the road out of town our car was struck on the left by really heavy winds. The car was pelted with gravel and dirt. Eugena just told me to get out of there so I turned right and floored it. Right after we turned right the winds really picked up. In front of us we saw all pieces of buildings flying from roofs, lawn chairs flying in the air, a trampoline flying end over end through people's yards and debris was just falling from the sky. I hit the gas even harder and flew through a bunch of stop signs just wanted to get aways from these flying hazards. As we were driving our car was struck by a giant piece of styrofoam. I just head a thud, Eugena saw it and pieces of styrofoam in our door jam confirmed what it was (lucky for us, in retrospec it could have been something more dense!). Speeding east we got to a point where we needed to get back on the main road if we wanted to get out of town. We hung a quick left then a right to put us on the road out of there. Looking to our left on the main road we saw a huge tree that had fallen in the middle of the road that we had taken into town. We were lucky to have taken a side street.

After we got on the main road we sped ahead of the storm, got home safely and spent the rest of the night watching the weather and preparing for the worst. Kirksville historically has been between 2 fairly established tornado "alleys". This held true for this storm. Word is that over 80 tornadoes touched down in Missouri Sunday night and early Saturday morning. It was amazing to see the storm heading towards us on the radar and then kind of split and go around Kirksville. We did get our fair share of rain and wind though. There was some pretty serious damage done not too far from us: Baseball size hail in Macon-30 miles south, a couple tornadoes in Columbia-90 miles south, 4 tornado related deaths in Renick-65 miles south, and what we experienced in Unionville-45 miles northwest. Local papers are reporting that the storm that hit Unionville was in fact a tornado. It's pretty crazy to think we were there when it hit. We are extremely blessed to have been kept out of harms way, we still can't believe we were there during the tornado. Luckily there were no deaths and few injuries in Unionville due to the storm. You can check out the local news report about the Unionville storm at: http://www.ktvo.com/Global/story.asp?S=4621778&nav=menu124_1

2006-02-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

The past week has been a great day for the American cycling community. The 1st Tour of California began last sunday and has been a great race so far. The coolest part about the race (besides that American's are dominating the race despite a number of very good European professionals being present) is that stage 2 of the Tour went through San Jose. The stage started up in the north bay and wound it's way down the eastern foothills into San Jose. My inlaws live in San Jose and last summer, before coming to medical school, my wife and I spent a month with them hanging out in San Jose. We brought our bikes out with us (of course) and found some incredible roads out there. Our favorite ride was on a Calaveras road out to a small town called Sunol and back. We would finish the ride by riding down the steep and extremely fun descent of Sierra Rd. We did this ride a couple times a week while we were there. I was stoked back in the fall when I found out that stage 2 would in fact be riding on Calaveras and then UP Sierra rd. One day last summer I set out to ride up Sierra. It was an incredible and extremely painful experience. It's an amazing climb, steep andn killer. This stage was touted as being crucial in the overall of the Tour. Unfortunately my academic constraints kept me from flying out to Cali for the Tour, but luckily my wife went and had a great time. This pic is of the leaders after the shattered the peleton on the Sierra rd climb. You can see Tom Danielson of Discovery on the left, Levi Leipheimer of Gerolsteiner (then the leader of the Tour) in the middle and Floyd Landis of Phonak (the current leader as of today) on the right. All American, all kicking butt on this climb. It is incredible to be so close to world class cyclists during an event like this. If you ever get a chance to attend a professional bike race (try to make it a "Tour" they're the best to attend), DO IT! It will give you an appreciation, not only of the sport of cycling, but for the tremendous athleticism of the people. Plus it's like going to a traveling tailgate party. And if you are ever in the bay area and happen to have your bike you got to check out Calaveras and Sierra roads. If you want more info about the Tour of California check out their website at www.tourofcalifornia.com. They have daily updates with pictures and even some video of the stages. Enjoy!

my head is going to explode...

2006-02-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

I think that going to medical school is a lot like the "milk challenge". For those who don't know what the milk challenge is (this is what my friends used to do for fun when I was in high school) to drink a gallon of milk in one hour or less and keep it all down. 99% of the people can't do it, its just too much dairy and lactose for the body to deal with. Usually what happen is that the person throws up a couple times and then swears off any dairy product for the rest of their lives. It's a great American teenager pastime.

Medical school feels like I am doing the milk challenge every week. The only difference is that right after I hurl I pick up another gallon and go for it again. And the kicker is that I am paying a hefty sum do all this. It actually sounds like it’s just a cruel joke. We are expected to sit in lecture and soak up all this info, then go home and re-soak it again and retain it. Weekends don't come soon enough and by the time they do I feel like my brain is about to vomit out everything it has ingested. This is all part of the process and the experience but nonetheless I had absolutely no idea how I am going to remember all this someday. Actually forget remembering ALL of it, I have no idea how I am going to remember ANY of it. If I could retain 5% I'd be in good shape. My only hope is that later in my education the next time I hear something I learned during my first year it will stick more the second time, or the third time, and hopefully the fourth time. Repetition is usually a good thing. So if anyone knows a good way to remember all the organs, blood vessels, ligaments, bones, and nerves for the pelvis, let me know by Monday cause my brain is feeling a little nauseous.

2006-01-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

Winter here in Kirksville came, then left, then recently came back with a vengance. A week ago we were enjoying temperatures close to 60 degrees and now it is as you can see in the picture, cold. This poor bike is one of our spare bikes that was given to us by a friend and gets to spend the winter outside due to a shortage of storage space. In spite of the cold, muggy, and miserable weather, things are still quite well. This week is crazy and it is only Monday. I have another big exam this week and a final for Immunology next monday. I spent way to much of my time studying this last weekend and that is not going to change anytime soon. I put a deposit down for the Himalayan trip so it looks like I will be heading to Northern India this summer for some medical humanitarian work. I'm pretty excited and in the process of trying to raise some funds to cover the expenses. Missouri winters are turning out to be colder than I expected.

this is good news for me....

2005-12-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

I was cruising one of my favorite bicycling websites the other day (www.velonews.com) and came across this article that was talking about cyclists rights in different states. The author of the article quoted missouri's law regarding cyclists:

Missouri-Missouri Revised Statutes Section 307.188: "Every person riding a bicycle or motorized bicycle upon a street or highway shall be granted all of the rights and shall be subject to all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle..."

I like this, now it means that I don't have to worry about vehicles giving me a hard time when i ride. Seeing as there are hardly any shoulders on the roads around where I live, I like knowing that I have the same rights and duties as the suckers in cars...

cool medical paintings

2005-12-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

I found this great artist on the National Library of Medicine's web page. His name is Jose Perez and he does these great illustrations of the different aspects of medicine.

my next summer trip?

2005-12-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I turned down a chance to go to South Africa on a Medical Mission trip to a community called Atlantis outside of Cape Town. There was something about the the organization of the group, it's leadership, and the trips goals that I didn't feel right about. It wasn't that I felt like it would be a bad experience. There are definitly people there that are in need of basic health care. I just didn't feel like the trip was the right fit for me. Anyway, I turned down my spot on the team hoping that something else would come up. Where one door shuts, another opens... or something like that. A friend of mine in school got hooked up with an organization called Himalayan Health. They are sending people on a trip to the edge of the western Tibetian Plateau, an area called Spiti. It turns out that I was offered a spot on the team. This photo is one of the villages where the team will be visiting and providing basic health care. The trip is amazing, a little pricey (I still got to figure out how I am going to pay for it all) but will surely be an incredible experience and opportunity, a great way to finish off my 1st year of medical school.

Debut of the Salt Sea Pirates...

2005-12-14T21:17:00.000-07:00

Salt Sea Pirates
Originally uploaded by sethgunderson.

2005 was the debut year of "Sky Captain and the Salt Sea Pirates" cycling squad with full custom kits featuring a flaming zepplin. Our team began as an group of close friends and family organizing a team for the 2005 MS 150 (a benefit ride for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society held all over the country). We started with only a few people but ended up with a team of 12 that raised >$4000.00 for the Society. We may not have been the largest team, but we were dripping with style, panache and sprezzaturra. Thus began the reign of the "Salt Sea Pirates". Randomly throughout the year we will have rides that act as "feats of strength" and riding with fellow pirates always make the ride that much more enjoyable and humorous. This pic is from the 2005 MS 150 with THE "Sky Captain" in the middle, me on the left and my wife peeking in on the right. Look for more Salt Sea Pirates photos as cycling season starts again and defiantly we will be present in the 2006 MS 150 in Utah.

Kiowa

2005-12-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

DSC00906
Originally uploaded by sethgunderson.

This is probably my favorite pic of our dog Kiowa. She is an 4 year-old Alaskan Malamute and a part of our family. I will likely post her lastest frustrating behaviors (she gets moody when we don't give her enough attention or exercise, not to mention the little bit of seperation anxieity she won't let go. her latest maneuver was practically shredding the blinds in our front room so she could see out the window while we were gone.) There is something about her eyes in this picture that makes it may favorite.

my new hypermegacybernetblog

2005-12-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

so i am new to this. i never thought that i would actually be interested in having or keeping a blog. i moved to missouri in august and have realized that this may be a good way for families and friends to keep in touch with my and my family's life. but here i am gaining my first bit of intraweb fame posting this first blog entry not really knowing what to write. i am working on getting a way to publish photos here for all to see. enjoy and hopefully i will have something of substance here soon...