Winter Park Series #2

Aaaaaahhh.....summer.......the Mrs., basking in the toasty glow of Front Range desertification...












Swweeeeet sweeeeeet summer......







You train, your prep, your whole week is centered around a two hour block of time; but when something goes wrong and yanks the dangling carrot away, there's absolutely nothing you can do.













Mountain bike racing is tough business, man. I mean, yes, it's about the strength and the endurance, but more than anything it's your ability to deal with pain. It's your ability to buffer the pain and then to push a whole lot harder. That's what makes a fast bike racer.



























Back when I was pack-fill in the Expert class in the mid-90's; a not-yet-ripe 18 years old, a flat tire to me was somewhat of an excuse that justified a "poor me" performance. But when you're in your prime, and racing in the top 5 in a regional Pro class race, a flat tire is much more of a genuine frustration.













So when this very situation occurred on Sunday, when not 2 miles from the finish something ripped through my rear tire like cold barbed steel through a sturgeon's lip; my day evaporated. Did I finish? Ya.........I went from 5th place to second-to-last in record time.....



Racing's hard lessons............................... you could shake your fists at the sky all day, or you could hold your head high and move on...

Oh - Tip of the Day: four-wheel-drifting the team car up Berthoud Pass, a'la "Euro-rally-racing" is in no way a valid pre-race warmup .........regardless of whether it helps or not..........

The Deception of Perception...

Oil is skyrocketing......the stock market is tumbling......corn as food, or corn as fuel.......the midwest is under water.....the Earths' storms are getting stronger.......I can't eat a frickin' tomato.....

Like my Dad always told me....... "......eeeeeeeeeeaaasy...."

.......I am many things, but what I am not is qualified to be dishing out life lessons. But in these trying and most uncertain of times, ones' perception of the world is what defines them.

How you choose frame life is up to you....

Ones' interpretation is what blends the very threads of our existence into something meaningful. Too abstract? Naaah....

I don't mean to get all tie-dyed on you, but think about it: I found my blow-off valve long ago.........

Have you found yours?

If It Can Happen, It Will Happen...

Fact: I still get nervous before every single race. A 16-year veteran to the mountain bike racing scene, counting down every minute until that moment comes crashing like a fist at the door instills nothing less than an instinctual urge to pee, like, twelve times.

The nervousness - that dry-mouth-knotted-up-stomach feeling - is such a primitive form of survival. And during a mountain bike race one gets an uncanny sense that they are racing to survive.

The day I stop getting nervous is the day I quit racing. Because, in a sense, I will have already quit.

When your average heart rate for a full hour is 178bpm, you can pretty much guarantee you've got it pinned. And for the final Sand Creek race of the series I definitely had it pinned.

So with the systems redlined and the front tire cutting like a blade through the twisty singletrack...

I fought hard to a 3rd place finish in the Pro division. Saweeeet. 4th place in the series. Niiice.

By the way - pure irony struck recently in what can only be described as the purest form of Murphy's Law when the two components that contribute to this blog the most - my bike and my camera - got into a fist-fight on my top tube leaving a most unfortunate scab....dammit. Peace and love, people, peace and love...

By the way, by the way, click the link, then click the first picture. Recognize anyone?

http://velonews.com/article/77851/winter-park-mountain-bike-series-mathers-and-freeman-win

Winter Park 2008 Series Opener: Hillclimb

Winter Park's 2008 Mountain Bike Series opener rallied the troops with the curse of a 5.5 mile hillclimb. And they came in droves...

Base elevation: 9000ft

Top elevation: 11,250ft

Race time: 36 minutes flat.

I had a "you know you're Pro"moment Saturday: You know you're Pro when..............your number plate says you are...

And when race results tell you you are...

I went through so many phases during this short race I felt like Ross friggin' Perot. Lead group from the gun....feeling strong...trying to conquer the world...fading....fading....standing up...bridging the gap...falling back....giving up on life....resurrecting the legs...bridging up.....catching a couple....just barely holding on...

The human heart can only beat so fast. For me, it's about 196 hummingbird-like beats per minute at its max. During a hillclimb mountain bike race, one finds that limit very fast. And you can't raise it- believe me...I've tried.

In the end I took a healthy 7th place out of 40 in the Pro Men division.

Meanwhile, my quest to infiltrate local print media continues, one media outlet at a time... But seriously, thank you to the readers of this blog, and for those who are perpetually interested. The more who read, the more random I get.

Next up: Sand Creek Series #3, Wednesday. Beer and recovery do not go hand-in-hand. June 2008 has turned out to be the cliche': race, recover (a little), repeat.

Sand Creek Series #2

Sand Creek Series #2 was a lot like Sand Creek Series #1: "Man...that was a kick in the pants... But, the front part of the pants." -DR


With a "bigger picture" race coming up on Saturday, I made a futile attempt to take it down a notch and not bury myself at this race. That is always easier said than done...

Final placings were almost identical to last week.

But far more importantly, I just heard that Pluto has been given the official designation of a "Plutiod" for which I could not be any more thrilled. The sheer thought alone that a celestial body at a distance greater than Neptune with a mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, aaaaaaaaaaand that it have not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit seemed totally obvious to me, in Pluto's case.

The Air Up There...

Sing it with me.....


"Aaaaalleluyah!....Aaaaalleluyah!...."







Slowly but surely the sun whittle's down what's left of a record winter. And when Winter Park's 2008 series opens next weekend, it's all about the climbing. A very short 5.5 mile hillclimb from the bottom to the top of the ski area. And at the bottom, summer is starting to show its signs at every turn in the trail...

Nearing timberline, however, is a whole different story...

And so gasping for air that just isn't there, at 11,250ft, you come to the stark realization that up here, it's gonna be a very short summer...

It should come as no surprise that I have a particular affinity when the trail turns uphill, and so I'm looking for a strong result next Saturday...

It all depends on who shows up, though. Former world mountain bike champ Ned Overend occasionally shows at Winter Park; so does 3-time national champ Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski. To be going up against guys like this gives me nothing but pride. But man, I hope I've done my homework right...

Sand Creek Series Race #1

The Sand Creek Race Series #1 was a serious lung buster.

60 minutes plus one lap on a 100% singletrack course, at only 12 minutes per lap - that means one hour of pedaling as hard as you possibly can...talk about being in the red zone...

Being a small, local Wednesday night series, the field sizes were small - I won the SemiPro category! But there was only one SemiPro. I did however, manage 5th place in the Pro field, and thus the overall, which I deem to be a pretty solid performance. It was nice racing in front of the homefield crowd.

Pretty cool seeing your team kit's pictured on every street corner on the front page of today's newspaper...

Check the story here: http://daily.gazette.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VGhlR2F6ZXR0ZS8yMDA4LzA2LzA1I0FyMDI1MDE=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

This weekend we head up to Winter Park and I'll test ride next weekend's hillclimb course...

A First Time For Everything...Again and Again...

This blog is seldomly about how light my bike is or how much I train. It's all about the lifestyle - it's about the places I go, the views I see, the full experience....because as much as I am a bike racer, I am a mountain biker first...

And as June 1st dawns, it is the time of year deemed the "meteorological start" of summer. Gone are the snowflakes, gone are the blustery winds and the subfreezing temps. Gone is the frost...

Time to start livin'...and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I am a very rich man...

If there's one thing Colorado's front range is not short on, it's singletrack trails. And when you hit a particular section for the first time that season, it's like you're hitting it for the first time in your life...

And if you have a bad day out here, it's your own fault. Just hope it's not as bad a day as ol' Bambi had...

Challenge: One of these kids is doin' his own thing, one of these kids is one in the same...one of these kids, is doin' his own thing, now it's tiiiiime to say his name~ me and the stunt double, just soakin' it in....which is which? Sure beats a'watchin the Daytona 500...

If you ever get the privelage to ride with my stunt double, pay attention. And don't fall behind. Cause when he say's "follow me" you'd better stay close - otherwise you'd better have packed your space blanket.

"...another one of those obvious trails..." Seriously. I'm not even sure we're still in Colorado at this point...

I'll let you in on a personal secret: I'm big on views. It's times like this when you forget about heart rates, you forget about your next race, you forget about taper training. It's funny how a place like this changes your complete perspective. We do it because we love it, and there is no better way to live...

And by the way, talk about "where's Waldo"... I'm taking every advantage I can to weasel my way in to the local media. Think anyone will recognize me? (No that's not my leg...I don't shave...upper right.) Baby steps...