Cheq check cleared!

Once again I applied to race the Chequamegon Fat tire festival. My check for the fee cleared 3/23, which is an early indicator I am in. 7 years in a row and 7/8. This year Erik Arentzen is making the journey to WI with me to compete in the "40." Game on....in 6 months!

Garmin Connect - Activity Details for Untitled

Garmin Connect -
Activity Details for Untitled

Lookout Mountain Death Match 1

Saturday was the start of the Death Matches, which is a timed ride up Lookout Mountain. The climb is a little over 4 miles and 1,200 ft of elevation. Yesterday we had a great turnout with I think 9 from the team and Ben. Lookout Mountain is at the base of the foothills by Golden Colorado. It is one of the rides I do right from home. By the time I met up with everyone else, I already had 23 miles and 1,200 ft of climbing. I felt pretty tired on the ride there. The idea of the Death Match is to start people according to speed so that everyone gets to the top about the same time. Its a great idea so that people of different fitness levels can gauge improvements against each other. I rode at a pace that I felt was just below cracking the whole time. My finish time was 24:50, which I was happy with considering how I felt that day, my ride time to the start, and and the fact that I've just started doing speed skills a bit. Erik, Bill, and I stuck around for a second lap up. The temperature for Saturdays ride started out in the mid 30s when I left but got up to the low 60s upon returning home. 64 miles and about 4,500 ft in elevation gain for the day.

Crank Brothers is now an official sponsor of Ride Against the Machine

Today I have been officially registered as the point of contact by Crank Brothers for Ride Against the Machine. I can't wait to get a new pair of TI egg beater pedals as they are super light and I think the blue skewers will fit my new bike very nicely!

Another Saturday, another 100 miles

Last Saturday Jeremy, Erik, Eric, and I set out for our March century. It was the same route as the week before, but we decided to head up Lookout Mountain. Eric, Erik, and I took some hard pulls leading into Golden before a refuel at a local gas station. Once we started the climb, Eric and I pulled away and kept a pretty good pace for being 40 miles into a 100 mile ride. We topped out at about 7,500 feet. We flew down the backside of Lookout where Erik and I reached speeds in excess of 40 mph! The rest of the ride was pretty standard. I felt sleepy tired by about mile 60 and refueled with a Cherry Coke, which gave me my wings back. I felt strong and alert the rest of the ride and led the charge back to town. The winds out of the east were just strong enough to be pretty annoying and take their toll. At mile 85 Erik, who has a power meter, was impressed by my power output. He was putting out 320 watts in my draft, which means I was putting out a fair amount more than that. With all of the early season riding, I am starting to feel pretty good, especially as I work in some speed work. Stats here.

Cyclocross like century

Todays route was the pretty standard metro century. Erik, Eric, Jeremy, and I set out for the monthly ride, which makes 14 consecutive months with a century for me. The day started off very nice. Departing weather was low 40s and sun. Can't beat that in February, though I am hoping soon to be able to ride in shorts without freezing. There was some snow and ice, but not that much considering we had snow a couple days ago. The first extended tunnel we were in turned out to have a nice base of glare ice. I was leading the way and was the first to slow speed crash, which caused Erik to crash into me. A couple tunnels later started out good, but had ice, then snow, and then hub deep water. I made it through unscathed, but looked back and the three others were all on the ground. Thankfully no one was injured, though there may have been some lost keys. We encountered some barricades we had to hike around and plenty of mud. Ride info is here. It was a pretty easy group ride for me. I felt pretty decent after not riding much the last week and a half due to tapering for last weekends snow race and a mid week work trip. My gps says I burned 5,400 calories. I don't buy that, but I bet it was a lot. Being able to ride all day in WINTER never gets old!

Extra lap.....

My race course, which I was 1st place, out of 1!

Yes, there was a bike race in the snow

Start of the race

Riding the snow bike

Decked out in winter snow racing atire

Pugs on left Bens bike on the right

snow packed road to Mt. Elbert

Ben with his Snowshoe caught under a branch

February 20th was the 2nd Leadville winter mountain bike race. It was held at Tennessee Pass nordic center at 7pm. The starting temperature was hovering around 10 at the start. I was lucky enough to be able to demo a Surly Pugsley (as seen on the right). For those of you who don't know, the tires are really wide so they float through the snow. The race was supposed to be 10.5 miles. Its on mostly wooded double track with one lollipop done in an open flat section. I guess there is one big loop and then a smaller loop up top. Thats where the story gets funny. As I was riding the start of the second section, I guess I missed the lap. It could have been marked more clear and there were not any coarse marshals. I was unsure if it was the turn as I approached and hesitated. My thinking was since it was not clear one way or the other to keep going with the thought in my mind that I would hate to cut the coarse and maybe the lap is up ahead. Nope. Wrong. I went down a pretty steep decent and once at the bottom, I realized I made a mistake. I had been riding by myself for about 25-30 minutes which included a while on the first lap. When I lapped through, I was probably 15-20 out of 48, I knew how to get back to the finish, and just rode it out pretty disheartened. I pushed on and enjoyed the ride not knowing when I would get to ride a fat bike again. I had been out for almost 2 hours. When I got back, a couple of friends said they were about to get on bikes and look for me. I thought it was kind of hard to believe, but I was not last. I was greeted with a warm fire, pasta, and some Oskar Blues brews-a sponsor of the race. I ended up with 1,700 feet of climbing and 15 miles on the 30+ pound snow bike, which was 4.5 miles and I think 600 ft more then Ben who had an awesome race as he finished 4th overall.

Sunday our plan was to get a few hours on the snowshoes to increase our high elevation activity. We drove towards the Mt. Elbert trailhead. The drive ended about 4 miles from the Mt. Elbert trail is as that was as far as was plowed. We hiked a mostly flat trail for maybe 1.5 miles or so. At that point Amy challenged us to head out of bounds. Ben and I trudged through Mid thigh deep snow for about 30 minutes. It started out as a gradual trail, and then we went up a wall with a 40+ degree pitch. After 2 hours or so it was off for lunch and back home.