A great weekend on the bike

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.

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

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

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

What's wrong with our dog?

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

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

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

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

Check out this amazing rider...

A nice December ride

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

Hi Mom E. and Mom G.

snow ride

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

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

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

I retract what I said in the last post

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...

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

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

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

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