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Sep 3 I Guess it is Time for an Update I have been avoiding updating this site for awhile. As I have not had any news that I really wanted to share. I crashed a couple of weeks ago and injured my knee. I did damage to my LCL and meniscus and some bruising in my bones in the area. I also have a pretty good laceration, that is really taking its sweet time to improve. The crash has kept me off the bike for the last couple of weeks and will continue to keep me from doing any riding of note for some time to come. I still have plans to go to Vegas for the Cactus Cup the show and the cross race, but am not going to be making hotel plans until I am sure I can make it. I missed Brian Head and that was really disappointing and in doing so dropped quite a bit in the series standings, so much for my plans of having my best year overall to date. But I did have some of my best races ever this year, and I did improve over previous years so it was a successful season. I go back to the doctor on Monday to se how I am healing, and I have been in physical therapy for over a week. I really hope to be back out there soon.
August 5 Back Home I have not been doing a very good job updating the site. I didn’t even take my computer on the last trip, and was without internet for the trip before hand. Oh well. Since the last update was Mount Snow. I did not have a very good time during the race. I started off slow to help battle the heat but ended up loosing the fight anyway. I was ok on the first three laps then absolutely shattered on the last. I ended up waking up on the side of the trail with another racer asking me if I was ok. I was almost at the top so I got back on my bike and finished, but slowly. I ended up sitting in the ditch on the ride back to the condo too. I was with Willie and we were riding back and my head hurt pretty bad. I guess I just got off and laid down for a while in a ditch, but I don’t remember doing it, just waking up. The short track was nothing special the next day, I dug really deep but did not have a great performance in my legs. After flying back to Idaho I went to work for a couple of days. The bad news was at the jump park Bean broke his collar bone. It sucked. I was pretty close when it happened. He was not doing anything difficult. Just riding through the rollers and came down with his front wheel off to the side and it took him down. Defiantly a sad day. Then I went back to Durango for Pussywillow’s wedding. It was a long drive. Good wedding, I am happy for him. I got to see some old friends. I had not seen Herting in a long time. I had a great time and am so glad I went. We all need to toast another fallen friend. And Guptil is the only one in my party that has yet to take that big leap so I guess he wins. Next on the list was Bromont World Cup. I took a red eye out of Sun Valley and showed up in Canada around noon on Thursday. I got to ride in my first mud of the year. It took a couple of days before I remembered how much I hate riding in the mud. I was all ready for the race but once it got underway it did not go quite as planned. I had a poor start and had issues moving up on the first lap. But after that I actually rode pretty well and was doing a good job running, which I did a whole lot of. Now I am back home and trying to figure out what else is going on. I have some work to get done the next couple of weeks. I also hope to get back to training. I am really looking forward to Brian Head at the end of the month.
July 18 East Coast Looks like my updates are late. I will make the excuse of not having internet access, or at least not being willing to drive to it. The travel out here went good. Brett and I scored coming out of Boise and we each got our own row on the flight. Then we met up with Willie in Chicago and made it to Albany on time. We got a room next to the airport and drove into our sweet set up in Windham. Momma Sue booked us a bed and breakfast that was pretty sweet. We ended up with a huge group and pretty much monopolized this place. We cooked dinners every night in their huge kitchen and used the front of the place for bike storage. We even got tour coverage. The XC went really bad. I had nothing in my legs from the time I rolled out of our place. I just should have spent the whole day in bed. I made one about 15 minutes pretty good but by the end of the first lap I was toast and did another one and by the time I got to the end I was so done. I had to pull the plug early and hope I could get something back before Mount Snow. I was on the fence about the short track. I pretty much was thinking about not even starting because of just feeling worn down. I rode there from the house and did a couple of easy laps on the course and made the call to race when everyone started lining up. With no openers in my warm up I somehow came out with a good start. I was pretty much in the top 10 the whole time. There was a brief moment like 2 or three laps in when the surge when around me but I got back in. Basically I was with Jurassic Park and the brothers Schultz and we were racing for 6th and they all worked me over on the last lap but it kind of seemed like a personal victory coming back from the day before and snagging a good start. We waited until after the tour coverage to roll on over to Mount Snow Monday morning. The drive went pretty fast as Brett Jurassic Park, and I gave Willie and Lidia grief for much of the drive. The place in West Dover is pretty sweet, I think Momma Sue should be a travel agent. Ben had me resting so I basically spent Monday through Wednesday playing pool and ping pong and taking long naps. I managed to get in 2 laps on the XC course before the race after being just minutes from it for 5 unbelievably sunny days. There was super drama in Jurassic Park’s race. He was on the front doing it all right and not even taking risks and on the first downhill say a dh rider coming at him out of the corner of his vision and then plowed into a water bar without noticing it and that called an early end to his race and he spent much of the rest of the day in the hospital. It was pretty gruesome. I was standing next to Dave as it happened and he got some good shots that need to be seen at cyclingnews.com. Tomorrow is my race and I am hoping that my legs are back in action and not still lost in transit from the mountains. Wish me luck
June 30 Deer Valley Race season started back up again for me. And I am glad to be racing again. It is not fun trying to be a bike racer with no races going on in the summer. I think I only raced one xc since Santa Ynez. One race in like 6 weeks. I had been training allot and working more, so I was worried about being tired for the race. I did laps on my spark and scale to see which bike was going to be my best bet for the xc. I ended up choosing to race the scale. There is a bunch of climbing and the downhills are not technical. I also opted to wear my new white kit that sure attracted a lot of looks and funny comments. I finally had a good start and held a position inside the top 10 for the first climb, and the first downhill, even after I followed the Turbo guy off course, just long enough for Ross and Andy to slide by. I kept think that if I could hold a good position for long enough that if I faded I would not fall back too far. After the 1st lap I was in 9th and by myself and pretty much stayed there just like that for the rest of the race. The guys in front of me put some time on me and the guys behind me were bringing me in. But I hung on for a top 10, finally. The weather was good it was not too hot and the course was not too chewed up. Everything was perfect conditions in Park City, no wonder I like going there so much. The Short Track seemed smoother that in years past, but that did not stop me from getting stuffed on the first lap and somehow hanging out around 30th place and the end of the lap. It took me a couple of laps to get it together, no doubt from being so tired from the day before. But I finally got going and moved up to 9th in just a couple of laps. I hung out there alone just like the day before. But this time I was actually making ground on the couple guys in front of me and not loosing too much to those behind me. All in all a pretty good weekend, best one so far for the season. Really happy with it, especially with the work schedule I had going into the race, Shelley was pretty upset that I was working 12 hour days going into what is possibly my best chance for a good result all season. I am looking forward to going back east to get more time to rest, maybe like it was a vacation too bad I am not going somewhere it isn’t going to be raining.
June 21 Long day Well I guess I didn’t have too long a day but the sun was out for awhile. I got to take advantage of a weekend day. I slept in then had a good breakfast. Went out and let Ben’s interval session work me over. Then come home for a nap, go to the shop get my bike ready for next weekend. Shelley got home from seeing Sex and the City, I did not have to go, then we went to the pool for a while. We had dinner then I got to go fishing. Tomorrow is going to be one of my biggest training days on my mountain bike all season. I hope to make it through. With some luck I will not have to do near as much hiking as I did last weekend. The best news is that the heat has finally come. It hit 90 here today. Just 2 weeks ago it was around 40 during the days. I have a late start to getting my tan on so I had better make the most of my time, just hopefully I will not waste it by burning. Got the check from the dog insurance from Benny’s last accident. This looks like it will have been a really good idea. Deer Valley is next weekend and it starts my big traveling block including, Firecracker 50, Windham, and Mount Snow, and Wilk’s Wedding. I am looking forward to getting some good rest on the road. Camps are going well, it is just drop ins now so if you know someone under 15 that wants to come out and do some cool stuff in the bike park in Hailey come on by any day of the week but Tuesday. Jr Team is also going well. The guys are doing awesome and we have gotten out and ridden some cool trails already and will get out for some more as the summer keeps going. June 16 Busy Oh man it has been a while since I updated the site. I went to the Teva Games and it went pretty well. But after that it pretty much went downhill. I had to rage back here after the TT and did not get home until 3:30 in the morning. This used to be a standard thing when I was in college but it seems a bit harder now. Anyway I got 4 hours of sleep then worked all day the next day and the day after that and after that, you get the picture. By the weekend I had finally started to catch up on my sleep and tried to even train on Saturday. But suffered from that and had issues on Sunday. Today was pretty chill and I think tomorrow will be good. I have high hopes for the short track race this week too. Last week I suffered greatly through it and just spent the whole time trying to stay away and not just pushing as hard as I could. This week I hope to feel good enough to just go hard the whole time. Day camps have been going good. The sun is out now and I am now trying to remember to keep applying sunscreen instead of putting more layers of clothing on, a huge improvement. It is sweet watching the kids improve so fast, what is impossible on Monday is scary but doable on Wednesday and by Friday it is easy. It is great. I have been trying to get out an fish for a few minutes couple of days. But I need to figure out where they are hiding so I do more than just stand there and through some string in the water while my dog looks at me like I am stupid. I need to update this more often, but this seems to be a slow time in racing. Starting with Deer Valley life will go back to racing every weekend and getting my travel on, I am so excited for it. June 2 My first ride with bare knees Well on the second day of June I finally got my first ride at home that I actually rode in shorts and bare arms. Mind you I started with leg warmers and arm warmers and had to ride through a rain shower early in the ride but I got to take them off and enjoy the sun. I am really hoping for some more of that action. This is going to be a good week. I got a sweet mtb ride in yesterday with Engin, basically the first ride on all the trade routes in Ketchum. Today I has an AM spin and an afternoon mtb ride with the jr team. Tomorrow a ride with the jr team then my first group ride of the year, and I have aero bars on so to get ready for the Teva Games TT so I get to look like a tri geek with the group, if you see me out there you better give me a hard time. Then I get to put in a full day at Sun Summit on Wednesday then the short track in the evening where I will be testing out the stans job I did on a set of 2.0 Furious Freds that are sub 300g they really make my scale light. Then Thursday I get to do the long haul down to Vail. Wish me luck. We baked Benny up a fresh batch of Buddy Biscuits today and he is excited, he loves those things so much it is funny. It seems like we had to do it after the nervous breakdown he had when Shelley tried to clip his toenails.
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