"Son, If You Ain't Hikin,' You Ain't Mountain Bikin'..."

Quote of the Day #1:

"Damn, you're not afraid to eat a well-ripened piece of fruit, are you? You probably won't pass a solid stool for a good coupla days...."

There just aren't many people in this world stupid enough to take a mountain bike up and down some of this stuff. And even fewer who are willing to do a little "new-route-recon" with yours truly. But thankfully, I found two idiots willing to do just that...

Talk about the blind leading the blind...

And wrong turns are inevitable from time to time when you're exploring some new territory.

Quote of the Day #2: "Man, what a ride.......especially seeing as we did 1500 feet of climbing that we didn't need to, in the wrong direction..."

The weekend had enough epic singletrack that you almost got tired of it. I said, almost...

And you know you'll be rewarded with the good stuff when the climb back out of Lake Granby is a thousand feet of vertical hike-a-bike within about a mile. Now that's paying the piper...

But the dividend is some of the narrowest, smoothest, most booty-licious singletrack I've ever put two wheels on.

The remote mountain command-post served us well as we tallied the weekend's eight-thousand six hundred feet of vertical feet climbed. Booty-licious indeed.....booty-licious in-deeeeeed...

Earnin' Those Sponsorship Brownie Points...One At A Time...

Going up against the Tour De France coverage on velonews.com is pretty much impossible, but us mountain bikers get a few props. And while it's not L'Alpe d'Huez, I'll take it! Cheggit...

Click MEEEEEE

You Don't Miss The Water 'Till The Well Runs Dry...

Kid Rock called....he wants his........goat back....

Time to race. Leave all thoughts of singletrack and the bliss of wildflower-lined trails behind. There's a time and a place for everything and the time for focus is now.

I said a few posts ago that the thing that makes a fast bike racer is the ability to buffer the pain and then dig a whole lot deeper. Well folks, I haven't grimaced this much in a long time.

It must be July cause the fitness is really starting to come around. Saturday's cross-country race was the perfect blend of short climbs, fast decents, and flat out power section. ANY podium is a good one, but making the Pro podium is as good as it gets. Oh Mr. Podium, how I've missed you so......

Congrats to teammate DR (who, dispite the photo, IS actually on the top rung) for his late-race surge. You know you had a good race when you cross the finish line and the only people around are the three guys who beat you and a handful of surprised volunteers.

Sunday would see a trade in bike choice, course terrain, strategy.

Night falls......recovery ensues..........a little....

In a Super D, races aren't won on the climbs like I'm used to. There are no climbs. It's all about the descent. You've got to be aggressive, on the gas, and for GOD sakes not do anything stupid like crash. Everyone starts at once and the first racer to the bottom wins. Sound scary? Ya I little bit. Especially when the only thing between you and the trees screaming by at 20-30 mph is glorified underwear and a styrofoam helmet with a bunch of holes in it.

Feeling confident, I cocked my head side to side and then it struck me - none of the guys I was up against had raced the day before, and most of them were Super D specialists. Not 15 yards into the 19 minute race and my legs exploded like a bunker-buster bomb. Well, I'm not one to let a bike race of any sort end without a fight so I put 'em up and ended up in a solid 6th place in the Pro's. Mission accomplished.

Next up, Colorado Crankworx Festival and Mountain States Cup at Sol Vista. Two brutally hard XC's back to back. But in the meantime, I'll have my head buried back in those wildlower-lined trails...

Colorado Springs local and Tuesday night ride occasional shower-upper Danny Pate just flat gittin' it at the Tour yesterday. Congratulations!

http://tour-de-france.velonews.com/article/80502/stage-15-was-a-mixed-bag-for-the-garmin-gang

Karma came back to me a bit over the weekend - more in a few~

If I Knew Any Better....

Imagine your best powder day of skiing............................your longest and most effortless tee-shot.......



...............Imagine the 12-foot Marlin of deep-sea fishing..........................the royal flush in Vegas.













...Imagine that guiltless gluttony of Christmas morning.....

I've been riding mountain bikes for a long time and it's infrequent when I get teary-eyed over riding a trail..........

It must have been the gently-sloping, ribbon-thin singletrack that did it. Meandering unobjectionably, through the valley as if to playfully immitate the rolling creek that it paralleled.

This is as emerald-forest as it gets - in fact, I was pretty sure I saw one of those red-hatted gnomes dancing a jig as I rounded yet another shrubbery-sized patch of blue Columbines. Never have I seen such vast spreads of Columbines peppered so liberally through a forest as there are here....

Aaaaaaah, yes, what more could one want out of life than the exuberance of blissfully and effortlessly pedaling through some of the most beautiful and vibrant terrain on Earth......................

And when a "training" ride is this much fun, it better be followed by a tall day in the saddle, where the trails are steep, and the views are large.

Cause you gotta pay to play. So I figured three-or-so repeats up the June 14th hillclimb race course oughta do it. Close to 5000ft of climbing with a different route back down each time would surely erase all memory of the previous day's debauchery.

Yikes..........If trail names like "Roof Of The Rockies" and "Icarus" don't tell you how high you are, the views sure will...

And if I'm lucky some of that hard effort will stick for the upcoming weekend's 2-day race up at "the Park." I've armed myself with the burliest tires that'll fit my fly-weight XC bike and a resurgance of the Yeti to the scene for my first ever Super-D.

I've already contaced the Fraser Valley EmergiCare and have extra suture kits on order.....

Double Does It Again...

So, whilst I was heavy in the purple haze of a Rocky Mountain wildflower weekend, the rest of the team was busy actually getting work done.

And If you've been reading this blog long enough you'll know that I employ a stunt double for my more dangerous work. Well, last weekend the stunt double put another notch in the ol' bedpost by successfully defending his Stars N' Stripes jersey.

He won the Mens 50+ Marathon National Championship, in Breckenridge, again, bringing his national championship tally to 3, with no sign of slowing down.

Well, he wasn't the only one out there on July 4. Congrats to he and the three other ProCycling team members for their well-earned podium spots at the race. I'm constantly reminded of how I neeeeed to do this race. Maybe next year I'll toughen up for the 4+ hour smackdown. After all, for as much as I like seeing red, why not see it for 4 hours instead of just 2?

Congrats~!

Summer's Main Event...

Life......

..............doesn't.....

..........suck.

If the past weekend's wildflower situation were a cloud, then it would be one of those enormous cumulonimbus anvil-shaped clouds; cause it was absolutely awesome.

Every arc in the trail led us through shin-high purples, yellows, reds, and blues. Rides like these really have a way of taming the mind.

And besides, who needs fireworks with colors like these?

Nearing the apex of Rollins Pass and the 11,660' Continental Divide, 5ft snow drifts persist as a reminder that summer up here is but a brief visitor...

Only temporarily pacified, we held our breath and drifted away...

You go on ahead..................I'll catch up...