Capital "P"

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

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

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

Beautiful California

My next ride

Ahhhhhh....so much better

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...

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

Great music by 3 great artists

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

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.