Almost racing time

I was going to write about my opinions about flow trails, but every time I worked through my arguments, I managed to convince myself that they were incorrect, so I'm bailing on that. My thoughts, after thinking it over for the better part of a week and a half, are maybe when you build a new flow trail, you should have to let it sit for two to three years and not perform any maintenance on it (unless there's some severe weather event such as flooding or large blow-downs). That way, the trail corridor you created will merge itself into the surrounding landscape so it doesn't look so out of place. After that, the goal of your maintenance should be to maintain that merged status, not to return it to it's just-built form. This addresses my main problem with new-school flow trials: they just look out of place in most areas (see the cover photo of Access Action in Dirt Rag issue #182). My second issue with flow trails is just as easily addressed. Other than a few trails on Narrowback Mountain outside Stokesville, VA, most new-school trails I've seen/ridden completely bypass (or remove) any natural features (i.e. scree slopes, or a rocky ledge). I believe that trails should reflect the geology of they area they are built in. If you're in Michaux, why would you build a trail without big rock features? Michaux has big rocks. The counter-argument (i.e. the pro-flow trail argument) here is that new-school flow trails are easier for beginners and help get them into the sport. This is great, and necessary, but there has to be some progression. If you have an area large enough to have 20 trails in it, how many of them should be easy, flow trails, how many intermediate trails, and how many advanced trails? This is a hard question to answer and means that we can't just have one approach to building trails. Certain areas have to be only beginner trails, or only advanced trails. Basically, my point is make the trails you build match the geology/terrain of the area you're building them in. Most people who want to get into mountain biking want to get into it because they like the idea of riding a bike on the trails nearest them, regardless of how difficult those trails are. In Fair Hill NMRA (in MD), they're like "The idea of riding a bicycle on these tight, tight twisty trails sounds rad!" while at White Ranch OS (in CO) they're like "The idea of riding a bicycle on these rocky, steep, switchback-filled trails sounds rad!" Both of those things are awesome and should be supported by building trails that are appropriate to the area they are being built in.

Anyway... I digress...

Last week I drove to Dallas and back, which kind of sucked. I was pretty impressed with northern New Mexico (many cool volcanoes) and the Texas Panhandle (cool, rolling desert-ey terrain), but the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro Area reminded me of the worst parts of the Baltimore Metro Area (i.e. the part that we lived in). Don't get me wrong, Havre de Grace is a cool little town and we were lucky that it was more or less the end of Baltimore's suburban sprawl, but areas like Abingdon and White Marsh are just endless shopping malls. It's definitely not my favorite place, and neither was the suburb of Dallas I was in. I did, however, have some good barbecue, so there's that.

Beautiful volcanoes in northern New Mexico.

Texas-shaped waffles in Texas.

Water + below freezing temperatures + centripetal force = SCIENCE.

The big news in the bike world this week is that I went full in and bought a SRAM XX1 group and Shimano XTR pedals for my Pivot Mach 429c. I am very excited about this. While 1x10 gearing might work for a lot of people in a lot of places, here in Colorado, having the wider range offered by the 1x11 set up is almost necessary, especially for doing long races. I'm also stoked to not have to rebuild Crank Brother's pedals every year (or twice a year). It might take me a few rides to get used to the pedals, but the increased reliability will be worth it. Plus, since I was using Crank Brother's Candy pedals before, I'm not taking that much of a weight penalty. I think if I decide to dive back into cyclocross again I'd still use Eggbeaters on that bike; Eggbeaters are far and away the best CX pedal.

Pretty bike, ready for rassin!

Pretty XX1, ready for maintaining reasonable cadences on steep climbs.

So that's cool. Thanks to SRAM for hooking us up at 92Fifty with these sweet parts! I'm most excited because the first race of the year is next weekend. I'll be putting all the training I've done to the test by throwing down in the hundred at the True Grit Epic. Hopefully you'll hear from me again after that!

It's still winter, so stay warm everyone!

Places most people have likely never considered going: Boise, Idaho

When one considers vacation destinations, Idaho is generally not on the list. Other than skiers visiting Sun Valley, I'd wager that not many people visit Idaho, or even really know much about it (other than potatoes). Mrs. Geology and I had decided to take a long weekend somewhere over Valentine's Day, so we started looking around. We were originally looking at Chicago, but hotel prices for the weekend were jacked up in expectation of people like us wanting to come on a holiday. Looking at the map of where Southwest flies from Denver, we settled, kind of on a whim, on Boise, Idaho. When we started actually looking into it, Boise turned out to be pretty cool: over 100 miles of singletrack right out of town, a bunch of interesting sounding restaurants, and a few museums. This was good enough for us, so we booked the trip.

Last Thursday night we got on a plane and ended up in Boise. The next morning, we (casually) headed to the Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey. Many of you might not know, but I really like raptors, especially falcons. The Center had a lot of those, which was pretty cool. They have a decent number of live birds, including a few California Condors, which are huge.

Large birds.

My favorite was the Gyrfalcon, even though he was behind sad bars. The reason the bird is in captivity is because it was impressed by some human falconer at birth (most birds on display at the Center are in this situation). It basically wouldn't be able to survive in the wild. They are really cool, though.

Gyrfalcon. Native to the Canadian Arctic, where I have actually seen them.

The next day we went to the zoo, and walked around the Boise River Greenbelt for a while. At the zoo, we saw a lot of fuzzy things.

Snow Leopard...  fuzzy!!!

Red Fox... FUZZY!!!

Zoos are always a little bit sad, but seeing predators in a setting where they aren't trying to eat you is always nice. The snow leopard was funny because it was just lying in the sun away from the glass until a toddler waddled up to the glass and leaned up against it. The leopard casually got up and walked right up to the glass and stared at the kid. I'm pretty sure he thought the kid would make a nice snack. The leopard quickly got distracted by some geese that were alighting on nearby rooftops and making a lot of noise. He prowled for a while until the geese flew away. It's a shame that there was some netting on the top of the leopards enclosure; I would have loved to see a goose land in the enclosure with the leopard. I'm sure it would not have been nice for the kids, though.

Sunday we decided to take a hike and explore some of the trails around Boise. I cannot say how, unfortunately, disappointed I was by these. We didn't hike very far, but from the research I've done and what I experienced, the good trails don't exist until you get much higher up in the mountains, and even the good trails are very smooth (like leave your suspension at home smooth). I do want to step back a little here, though: I would love for someone to prove me wrong. I really, really want to find some rad, technical trails outside of Boise, and I really, really want someone to show them to me. Most of this disappointment likely comes from my personal biases (something I'm going to write about in a few days), but I was still sad. Sad enough that I didn't take any pictures.

The next day we did a little driving tour of the Snake River area, which was much cooler. The Snake River Canyon, where the Snake River cuts through many layers of basalts associated with the Columbia River Flood Basalt province, was a sight to behold.

Snake River Canyon.

Also the Snake River Canyon.

Mrs. Geology and I had a good time exploring the basalt boulder fields in a nearby park. It's definitely a unique area with interesting geology. I'll leave you with a few more pictures. Look for another post this week on trail stuff.

Boulder fields 1.

Boulder fields 2.

Basalt cliffs with alternating columnar and less-columnar layers.

Basalt boulder with flow banded vesicles. Mrs. Geology for scale.

Going to get good at hundreds

If my entire goal this year is to become a better hundred mile racer, I think I'm on the right track. Last week, amid unexpected car repairs after sliding into two curbs while going around a snowy roundabout at low speed, I got in some pretty solid days on the bike. All the trainer rides were capped off this weekend by two very good mountain bike rides. On actual real-life trails that didn't have very much snow on them. There were definitely some bad spots, I had to butt slide down one switchback which was off camber sheet ice, but most everything was good and dry. One might even call it hero dirt since it was a bit more wet than dirt normally is in these parts. Regardless of what you call it, it was a fun day to ride a mountain bike, especially since it was pushing 70 degrees both Saturday and Sunday...

On Saturday I did some race simulation stuff at Apex Park. I've never ridden at Apex before, but I looked at a bunch of maps and figured out that Apex was the best place to put together a 10 - 15 minute loop that I could race on. I figured that I would ride bike paths all the way to Apex (I can do that because of Colorado), do some laps, and ride bike paths home. I did end up doing just that, but it took me near an hour to get to Apex, then I had to climb all the way up to the top where my loop was. It wasn't bad, but it probably wasn't ideal. The laps went well, I couldn't go as fast as possible in some sections because of lingering snow, but I think I put down some good power. I also got a pretty damn good view of the plains, and a sweet techy descent down from where I did my laps.

Race Face, Ergon, and Denver

Freshly rebuilt fork from 92fifty, and my lovely Pivot Mach 429c.

On another note, I think I have finally dialed in my bike's suspension. Now that I have a working shock pump, I've set my sag correctly and gotten the rebound dialed in (full fast, for what it's worth) the bike feels so good. I also got to see some cool geology on the way back.

CSM Geology Trail

I find fault with this image.

Structure > Fossils

Looking up Lookout.

Sunday's ride was much more adventurous. I was planning on heading up into the mountains and doing the Idaho Springs loop, but the weather report said it was as windy up there as it was down here, which was very windy. The deciding factor was that it was supposed to be 10 - 15 degrees warmer down here. I ended up doing a big trail loop from my place down towards Morrison, I rode damn near five hours, and most of it was on actual singletrack bicycle trails. This was definitely the best Front Range ride I've done yet. I rode, in order, North Table Mountain (where it was super windy at the top), Golden Cliff's Preserve, Windy Saddle (also windy, obviously), Apex, Dakota Ridge (a.k.a Matthews/Winters, picture a longer, more exposed Grave Ridge and you have Dakota. It is probably the single most technical trail on the whole Front Range), Red Rocks, and a bit more North Table Mountain on the way back. I had a really great day, even though Dakota was about as crowded as a shopping mall on a Saturday. I rode solo, listened to music, and was pretty tired by the end of the ride. It was great training for hundred mile races, where I'll be alternating between trails and not-trails. Hopefully more rides like this are in my future. Now for a few pictures.

North Table Mountain.

Golden Cliff's Preserve. 

The saddle at Windy Saddle.

Windy Saddle overlook.

The top of Apex.

I guess this place is called the resting tree. Apex Park.

Small overlook on Dakota.

What Dakota actually looks like.

Red Rocks.

Caught this guy on Dakota, rode with him for a bit through Red Rocks.

Called Red Rocks for a reason.

My bike afterwards.

What to do when it's not windy in the mountains..

I got pretty lucky this weekend. The snow that was forecast for Friday night/Saturday morning never materialized. I was a little worried when I did a short North Table Mountain loop on Friday that I wouldn't be seeing dirt for a long while, but I managed to get out on some trails for my ride on Saturday. The ride was scheduled to be some tempo intervals, which I usually do on my road bike because it has my power meter. I decided to change it up, do a mix of road and trail, and ride my Pivot Mach 429c. I (obviously) did my intervals on the road, and a bit more road climbing after that, but I ended my road climb at the top of White Ranch where I proceeded to shred down the Belcher Hill Trail. I was planning on doing the whole Longhorn, Shorthorn, Longhord Whippletree descent, but I got to the trailhead at about 5 PM and I didn't have my lights (for some reason). Here in Colorado, or at least in Jefferson County, you get one hour after sunset to ride in Jeffco Open Space areas. Now that sunset times are creeping towards 5:30 PM, I'll be having enough time to get in a decent mountain bike ride after work. Hopefully this will be worked into my training schedule soon. Doing Zone 1/2 stuff at White Ranch will get easier in a few days (hopefully) when I have a new SRAM XX1 kit on my Pivot. I am very excited for this, and for the team to be representing SRAM for the 2015 season. While I don't really like this night riding policy (I would be totally in favor of something like they do at Fair Hill so we can get longer rides in on trail during the winter), I like that we can actually do it here; in Boulder County you can only ride at night on Marshall Mesa, which is so smooth you might as well ride a cross bike.

Road intervals. Mountain bike. Winning

Sunday those of us who live down on the Front Range woke up to five or six inches of snow. I was sad. I thought that our planned Cheese and Fries ride would have to be cancelled. JD messaged and said that he was worried about the snow up where he is, so I suggested fat bikes. There just happened to be a demo Felt fat bike bike in the shop that was my size-ish. I went up there, got the bike set up, and headed out to ride. JD wanted to get 5k feet of climbing to give him an even 30k feet for the week, so we basically road around and climbed a bunch of stuff on fat bikes. If you don't know about fat bikes (what rock are you living under?) let me tell you a little bit about them. They are slow and heavy. There is no getting around that. Even the 22 lb full carbon Borealis wonder bike that I got to ride last winter was slow. Slapping a four or five inch wide tire on a three or four inch wide rim and running it at less than ten psi is going to have a lot of rolling resistance. If you're riding on a road, you'll want to put a few [hundred] pumps of air in the tire to mitigate that as much as possible. I can't see riding them on smooth tight trails at high speeds to ever be enjoyable. Fat bike wheels conserve noticeably more angular momentum then even a 29er.

Don't let that deter you, though: fat bikes are very fun. In the right conditions (ex. semi-packed to packed snow and sand) they are, quite frankly, amazing. This was my first real ride on a fat bike (my Borealis demo last year was at a race that ended up being mostly running), and I had a ton of fun riding some of the trails that I ride all the time in the summer. Even with fat, knobby tires, there is a lot of sliding. That combined with the constant possibility of straying from the section of the trail packed by hikers into the deep, soft powder along it's edges and ending up with a face full of cold stuff. even riding snowy roads with tires at 12 or 15 psi (we added air to our tires for the road sections) was tolerable. The Felt, which was a small, had a super stubby stem so it felt close to what I imagine a BMX bike feels like. Since it put me in a very upright position for climbing, I'd rather have a medium with a stubby little stem. All the shop had was a small, though, so I rolled with it.* JD and I had a fantastic ride up in the mountains, and I was pretty worked over afterwards. I got a few pictures.

Felt Double Double with Bar Mitts (which are also rad).

Coach, team manager, shop owner.

Winter above 8000 feet in Colorado

This is why we ride high

I'm starting to get into a real rhythm with my training now. Wake up, either run or do core work, go to work, come home, ride, sleep. It's starting to feel good. I've already dropped almost 10 pounds from what I was after Christmas (at least on my crappy scale). I don't think I'm fast yet, but fast is closer to the horizon than it has been in a few years. It's a very exciting time indeed.

Laters!

*The Shop has a medium Pivot LES Fat coming in for demo use (can you see the plans forming in my head yet???)

What to do when it's windy in the mountains...

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Last Sunday, I had a bigger ride on my schedule. We had planned on hitting the Big Classic (Shop > Boulder > Shop) loop, but I got a Facemessage from JD at about 05:30 hrs saying that his house was shaking from the wind and that I probably shouldn't make the drive up; riding would not be fun. Instead, I headed up to Boulder and did a big dirt road loop with some teammates on CX bikes. While the ride was not quite as hilly as I had planned, it was good nonetheless.

Flat dirt roads

I was accompanying Shane D. and Mike B, and since there were only three of us we moved along at a decent clip. We never had any paceline going because all of us were mountain bikers and two of us didn't know how to paceline properly. I found myself, as the youngest and apparently the most "roadie," teaching the other two how to paceline. I tried to channel my inner Fatmarc, or Tom McD while doing this, as those are the people who taught me how to ride in a group.

A small riser, only Long's Peak in the background.

Still riding towards Long's Peak.

Obligatory dirt road selfie.

On the climbs, like I was going to do on the longer climbs in the mountains, I rode a solid tempo pace. We ended up putting in just under four hours and just over sixty miles. It was definitely one of my better days on the bike in a long time. By the end of the ride, my legs felt snappier than they have felt in maybe a year. Then we went to Twisted Pine Brewing Company and ate pizzas and beers.

Monday was a planned rest day, so I took the opportunity to clean both my mountain bike and my cross bike (see mud on jersey in previous). I used the chain cleaning technique espoused by Matt on Just Riding Along (a Mountain Bike Radio podcast... if you don't listen to it, you should). So now my chains are extra clean.

Yesterday I had an easy ride scheduled, so I went exploring. I ended up taking a trip up and over Dinosaur Ridge, back down through Golden, and back to the office. This was definitely a fun ride, and definitely one I'll be repeating soon.

The climb is short, but the road is completely closed to traffic.

Ripple marks!

Dinosaur tracks!

Ash layers (glasses for scale)!

Red Rocks!

The weather is starting to take a turn back to winter, so this weekend might be a bust for riding around here. A few 92Fifty folks are looking into some more southern options for riding this weekend; hopefully that pans out.

Laters!

The First Week in Trianing

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Last week I pedaled a bicycle for six consecutive days. This is more than I have done probably since we moved out to Colorado, approximately 1.5 years ago. I didn't do any hard efforts other than my field test on Friday, so my legs aren't that sore; they do reflect the effort I have put in over the last week, though. Especially yesterday's 2x20s. 2x20s are more or less the foundation needed for all types of endurance racing, so while they are not the easiest intervals to do, they are necessary. I don't have many pictures from the week, and those that I took I already shared on some social media, so I won't bother posting them. Let's just say that it was 68F yesterday when I started my ride, and averaged 58F over the almost three hours I was out. Riding in shorts and short sleeves is one of the privileges of living on the Front Range. Everyone thinks that winters here are horrid, but they're really not; there will be a handful more days like today before we transition to spring weather. Plus, even when it's cold down here (up in the mountains is another story), it's not that cold. The low humidity means that even on the coldest days I rarely break out my full winter gear. I usually have stuff with me, but I may only put it on for the longest descent.

After riding Saturday morning, Mrs. Geology and I set out for a night away. We had bought a deal online for what we thought was two nights (it turned out to be only one) at the Claremont Inn in Stratton, CO. Eastern Colorado isn't the most exciting place, it's very flat, and the elevation drops off rather quickly until you hit Kansas, but it does have this place, so it's got that going for it. We enjoyed a wine tasting with very liberal quantities of wine, a fantastic dinner and breakfast the next morning.

I'm looking forward to more riding and training this week. I have a lot of work to do before I take the start of the True Grit Epic 100 in March.

Laters.

Going to Try This Again...

I'm going to try and start writing here again.  After half a year of not writing, the shorter forms of Bookface and Twitter are no longer cutting it for me.  Plus I have a new thing for 2015, or more accurately restarting an old thing.

Starting on Monday (January 12 for those counting), I'm going to be coached by Jonathan Davis, who is the man behind 92Fifty (the team race for) and Elevated Legs.  He is a very experienced 24 hour (former national champion, if I remember correctly) and 100 mile racer, so I'm very excited to be working under him.  He will be working around my busy work schedule, so when I'm travelling I'll be running and doing core work and cross training.  I actually like running, and there are some pretty fun places to run where I usually travel.  After 1.5 years in Colorado and basically three years off any formal training plan, I'm very excited to get at it.  There are a lot of great races here in the West, and I have gotten the itch to explore them all.  To the right of these words is what I'm looking at for this year.  As you can see, there's the possibility of a full NUE season there using none of the NUE races I've done before.  Also there is the Vapor Trail 125.  I remember reading about this race many years ago and thinking that it would be hard; all but the first 10 and last 10 miles of the race are over 8500 ft and you spend a good portion above treeline at night.  JD (who has done many 24 hour solos) says it's the hardest one day race anywhere.  I want to give it a try this year.  My goal is to finish, and hopefully finish strong.  Another big one is the Maah Daah Hey 100.  That is a 105 mi point-to-point singletrack race on the Maah Daah Hey Trail in North Dakota.  North Dakota you say?  You're confused about why one would go to North Dakota for anything?  Well, I can guarantee you that it will be worth it, and I haven't even been there yet.  I'm very excited for both of these races.

Saturday I got on my bike for the first time this year.  I did a short loop at White Ranch because I was heading up the mountains on Sunday to do a 4 hr ride from the Shop down to Idaho Springs.  Saturday's loop was fun, if a bit icy.  I rode early to avoid snowmelt, so everything was still very frozen.  I had a hiker ask me at the trailhead how I did with ice.  I told him that it only made it more interesting.  I think I'm one of those mountain bikers who is not turned away by bad trail conditions (unless I'd damage the trail), so riding on packed, footprint-ridden snow was just another thing.  I doubt many people rode trails that day.  It was a good first ride of the year.  Later that afternoon Mrs. Geology and I went on a walk on some of the paved trails around Golden.

Sunday's main event was the classic Black Hawk to Idaho Springs loop coming back on Oh My God Road and Dory Hill Road.  It was a good ride, but definitely a hard jump into 2015 training.  7k of climbing over 45 mi in 5.5 hrs, but I made it home in good spirits.  Now I'm shoving food in my face and waiting for a reasonable hour to go to bed.

Some pictures from White Ranch:

Hogbacks.

Icy trails.

Tire tracks in big snow crystals.

Good Pivot... stay Pivot.

Denver over yonder, plus more hogbacks.

Until next time...