The first race of 2015

I'm always nervous for the first race of the year. This year was no different. Mrs. Geology realized about five days before the race that we hadn't made any travel or food plans; we knew we were driving over two days, but we had no hotel plans for the overnight. Rather quickly, we got everything together, but I'm still always worried that something would be forgotten. Luckily, this year we forgot headlamps for camping, so it wasn't something crucial.

We made our overnight halt in Grand Junction at about 9:30 PM after finding clear roads through the mountains. Friday we drove the rest of the way to St. George, and made it there just in time to sit in a medium-long registration line. I did a quick ride with some openers on the first short climbs of the lap, and settled down for a sleep before the race start.

For some reason I set my alarm for 5 AM the next morning, even though the start was at 8 AM. It didn't matter anyway, because a dog (owned by one of the people staying in the camping area, mind you), began wandering around and indiscriminately barking at things at around 4:30 AM. I was instantly awake and ready to go. Who ever was so inconsiderate that they let their dog roam freely around down town Santa Clara (as far as I know) should be punished in some way. I'm sure the dog was scared, but until I figured out that it belonged to one of the racers, all I wanted to do is throw rocks at it at 5:15 AM as it sat about twenty feet from my car barking at me. When I found out that it belonged to someone camped near me, I wanted to throw rocks at them (aside: we were camped at a municipal baseball field, so when a local little league team came to practice later that day a mom called animal control because the dog was harassing the kids. Apparently they came and took the dog, and the people were no where to be found when I came back to camp after my race).

The race start was chilly, and I lined up with the thirty-odd Open Men for the first wave of the day; the Open Women, Singlespeed, and Masters would start seven minutes later. It was a chilly wait.

Waiting...

We rolled down the opening road section at a relaxed pace. The group was so small that we didn't really need to jockey for position too much. That combined with the steep opening dirt climb meant that gaps would open naturally. When we hit dirt, I watched as my heart rate climbed up and up, then decided to just let the group go. Going straight to Zone 5 at the beginning of a hundred isn't a good thing, and while I've gotten a lot faster in the last two months, I'm still not front-group-in-an-NUE fast. The lead trio in the SS field passed me about 20 minutes into the race. The first women passed me about a half hour later. Being in such a small field, I was pretty much alone the entire time. This was ok since there were no long road sections to like in the 101 or Shenandoah, and it allowed me to attach the technical sections without being held up by anyone. I rolled right through the Waterfall section Barrel Ride (I think that's the trail name) without any trouble; it's just steep after all. Zen went much the same, as I distanced myself from folks who had trouble with the technical parts. At the end of Zen I rolled up the road climb with Roger Masse and Amanda Carey. These were probably good people to be with, and I let Roger lead down Bearclaw Poppy. After the turn around, his pace was too high, so I let him go.

Zen Trail, first lap.

Carey caught up to me on Stukki, and we worked together on the most boring part of the course for a while. Stukki might be the most boring trail, but I think it has the best views on the entire course. At the end of Stukki, right at the base of that last steep climb, Carey attacked me hard for some reason. I suppose there's a reason why she's won the NUE twice or something...

The first Barrel Roll was uneventful. Junstin Lindine passed me near the end of the loop to win the 50 mile race. The second lap went about as expected; making the best time I can up the climbs, and attacking the descents. The second time through Zen was a bit uneventful as well. Zen is definitely harder the second time, since you have to constantly throw down large bursts of power to clear the various tech moves that come up. It's still a fun trail, though, and I think I'd rather ride it Zen a few more times than do all that fast stuff between in and the Rim Runner stuff. I say that now, fully realizing that I probably wouldn't like it if I actually had to do it.

Barrel Rolls.

Somewhere in the hot and boring part of the course (read: everything from the end of Zen to Rim Runner) I think I got a little heat stroke. I definitely stopped sweating, and started to get a bit of a headache. Near the start of the two-way section before Rim Runner, I got caught by two other guys. I think they saw how bad I look and took a bit of pity on me. One of the dudes gave me some endurolytes, and informed me that we weren't far from the cut-off water stop. At that water stop, I switched my bottle of caloric stuff I'd been drinking for a bottle of emergen-C in order to replenish some more electrolytes. It worked. A few minutes later I felt much better, my skin had a bit of a sweaty sheen to it, and I motored on. The remainder of the race went really well, and I finished in around 9.5 hours. Unfortunately there's no way to compare this to other hundreds I've done since A) It's only 88 miles, and B) it's a lot harder than any of the other hundreds. Next year, though, next year I'll have something to compare...

I spent last weekend hanging out with some friends and riding in Boulder. Friday night we went to dinner up there with old C3 friends that were in town. Saturday we did a classic Boulder loop on the roads (Boulder > Lefthand > Ward > Ned > Coal Creek > Boulder), and Sunday I rode Betasso with KMil and Jay. That was my Boulder fix for the next month or so. Tomorrow I'm leaving for the 2nd anual 92Fifty Moab Camp, so that will be fun. Look for another update after that. Hopefully I'll take some pictures.

I'd like to thank all our team sponsors for my race at True Grit, and all the people who have supported me so far this year, especially Pivot Cycles for making the best damned bike out there for this kind of racing, Race Face for making really comfy handlebars, and Ergon for keeping my hands and butt happy. Here's to the 2015 racing season!

Announcements

This week marks the start of two things: the first is the 2015 mountain bike rassin season, and the second is a new chapter of my non-bike life. As of last Monday, I'm taking over my bosses position at work, so I'll be the Customer Care Manager. He's moving up into a sales management position. It's going to be really good for both of us as we continue to expand and grow. I'm pretty excited about this because it means I'll be able to spend more time at home with Mrs. Geology and more time riding my bike. Although it is a bummer that I'll be traveling less, I get to set the schedule so I can keep my really cool sites in Alaska and the Canadian sub-Arctic. It's going to be a busy time for me in the next six months while this transition takes place, but in the end, it will be good. It's good to feel like I'm valuable to my company.

In the bike world, I'm in taper mode for the True Grit Epic right now. It's the first race of the NUE Series, and the course is super fun. I'm lining up for the full hundred miler (2 laps, 88 miles), and I'm feeling stronger than I've felt in a very long time. All this training has done me good.

I did a few good rides this weekend. Saturday I did a road/trail loop on my mountian bike that included sliding down most of White Ranch because there was so much snow. It was that funny kind of ride where you'd just ride until you crash, and repeat until the bottom. It was a lot of fun.

Blue skies all day.

Selfie.

Road riding on mountain bikes.

Sunday I headed up the mountains and did a short (<3 a="" an="" and="" another="" bird="" blue="" but="" day="" didn="" dirt="" easy="" few="" get="" good="" hours="" hr="" i="" in.="" it="" jd.="" just="" kind="" loop="" many="" mountain="" much="" of="" on="" p="" pace="" pictures="" put="" really="" road="" roads.="" so="" stop="" t="" time.="" to="" was="" we="" went="" with="">
My next post will be after True Grit, so you have that to look forward too. My goal is to not crash and break everything this year.

Laters!

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!