Give Thanks...

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time of giving thanks for all the wonderful things in your life.  I suppose it was originally somewhat of a somber holiday, but over the years it has turned into a day of watching not one or two NFL games, but now three games, eating yourself into some sort of pants unbuttoned, lying on the couch in a carbohydrate and tryptophan fueled coma and (for some of us) planning to cap our giving of thanks by trampling over our fellow citizens to get a dumb-assed toy for 99 cents at Wal-Mart at midnight that will be collecting dust in the back of the closet by December 29th.

Let me put all of it into perspective for you.  Last night I got a call from a friend telling me a friend, classmate, and fellow Queen City Rambler-Colorado Division, Scott Marr was in a serious car accident.  The accident sent one of his children, via helicopter, to the hospital and took the life of his wife.  Even as I type this, and I've had 12+ hours to digest it, my stomach is turning and my hands are shaking, I can't imagine what he is going through right now.

I have all these things I want to say about this situation but as I type, none of them sound right.  I've typed and deleted more lines than I can count.   I want to tell you what a solid person Scott is and how amazing his family is and nothing sounds right (although I suppose I just did).  I want to offer my condolences and express my feelings on this but it all rings hollow and nothing can take away what the Marr family is going through right now.

You'd think at a time like this I could muster up at least one funny anecdote to inject a moment of levity, but I can't, so I apologize.  So, for the Marr family, (and your own) today at your Thanksgiving meal understand what it is to truly give thanks.  Hug your family and friends and be glad for all the wonderful people you have in your life.

Takin' Time Off...

I know I said my next post was going to be about the shenanigans on our recent Mickelson ride, but recently there's been a lot of chatter around the guys I ride with about the #ahhffseason or the lack thereof for some guys and I couldn't let it go (I'll get to the Mick ride soon).  A couple guys are still out hitting up 5+ hour rides and some of us say this aggression will NOT stand!

C'mon guys...let's have an off season!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for going out when the sun is shining and it is a beautiful autumn day and hitting up your local trails for a FUN ride, but this heart-rate-monitor-wearing-power-meter-watts-tracking-Strava-KOM-points-collecting stuff is no buenos.  The off season is a time to rejuvenate, to take some time off the bike so you can see your family again, you remember those people that you saw sleeping in their beds as you slipped out the door at 5 am to go on a training ride before work, those people that you waved goodbye to as you headed out on a weekend to go on a 50 mile mountain bike ride, those people that supported you at your races all summer long?  Yeah, recconnect with those people.  

Ahh, rollers, the road to nowhere.

Off season is a time to watch football, to get chores you've neglected around the house done, to rediscover Sunday afternoon naps, to drink all the great fall beers that are available, to, well, do all the crap you haven't done since April 'cause you were too damn busy riding your bike.  Will your fitness wane?  Probably, but only if you don't do anything.  Will your biking ability fall off?  Most likely. 

And actually, that's what I'm hoping for.  I need every advantage when spring rolls around and if more guys I rode with would take more time off, I'd have more advantages.  So, please, take some time off...get slow and out of shape.  I'll keep riding rollers, swimming, lifting weights all winter so once spring comes around, if only for one or two fleeting moments, I can see what the front of the pack looks like.

Gettin' rowdy at Curt Gowdy

 If you were to jump into the Way Back Machine with Sherman and me and go back 3 years you'd find a report on the Rambler trip to Curt Gowdy.  Who really gives a rats-ass about a post about 8 stinky guys riding their bikes at a place in the middle of the least densely populated state and what does that have to do with this post you might be thinking to yourself. Well, it was the last time we went to Curt Gowdy, or a fall trip for that matter and I suppose enough time had passed for us to forget the soul-sucking-tent-destroying 60 mph winds and have another trip to southern Wyoming.

JT's plan (this is where we should have intervened as JT's plans ALWAYS involve getting up at some ungodly hour) was to roll out of SD at 3 a.m. (did you know there is a 3 a.m. where people are awake?) drive to Curt Gowdy so we can ride all day Friday, go to Ft. Collins and ride bikes around to a bunch of the breweries and then do a ride in the Snowy Mtns. west of Laramie on Sunday to return late Sunday night.  Sounds rad, lets do it!

I rolled out of NSS Headquarters around 3:10 in the luxurious mini-van ride of John M.  The plan was to meet up with the northern Ramblers at Mule Creek Jct. and if we left around the same time, our ETA would be the same, although since Jay was pulling a "camper" for us to stay in (more on this in a minute), we could leave a touch later and still meet up at the right time.  John and I got to MCJ and after a couple phone calls, we found they were about 20 minutes out.  As we see the crew roll into the rest area, I see that Jay is not pulling a camper at all, but a small house!  Seriously, this thing looks like a semi-truck rolling down the highway.  No shit, we're gonna be living in luxurious digs for the weekend!  I just feel bad for Jay's family as I am sure there is no amount of air-freshener that will clean up the smell in that 5th wheel from having 8+ guys creating a fog bank of pit-stench, sweaty cycling duds, nut-mist and ass-gas.

NW Gowdy Ride

Anyhow, we made it to Curt Gowdy and started riding.  The riding at Curt Gowdy is really cool stuff.  The work they did (and are doing) there is excellent, with trails for all abilities (which meant there was a lot of shit WAY above my riding ability).  The park is kinda divided into two halves, ride wise anyhow, the Northwest half and the Southeast half.  Both halves are rocky and technical, but couldn't be more different.  The NW is more forested with big, chunky granite rocks causing you to make big moves, rail steep ups and tire-rubbing-your-ass descents.  The SE is more high-plains-desert with broken rocks, dry, yucca covered trails.  There is a bit of transition in the middle where some of each blends into the other, but for the most part this is they way it is.  We rode the NW section in the morning and the SE section in the evening.  We rode down stuff above our ability, with some guys making some moves that were mind-blowing, and others being far more intelligent than the rest and walking down some of these steep sections.  I won't get into the minutia of the rides, you know "we rode over a rock here, then around a tree there, yada, yada, yada..." kind of stuff, but I will tell you we went on a ride in the evening that was forSURE a Rambler ride.

Nick, why is your crank arm off your
bike?

SE Gowdy Ride

Our ride for the evening took us on a trail called End of the Line which was cool and technical and made Nick pull his right crankarm off while leaving it attached to his shoe as he was trying to pedal up a tight switchback.  After a trailside fix we ended up on the Canyons trail which was marked "expert" and holy shit, it was!  With the sun setting we were carrying bikes down big, chunky rocks, down through gullies and back up the hill on the other side.  As we were nearing what we thought was the end, we looked across the "canyon" to see the trail wind back up another BIG hillside.  Riding home in the dark was going to be a distinct possibility.  We decided to ride back to camp on the gravel road and we made it back basically at dusk after Nick lost his crankarm again (and John having to go back to rescue him in the van).

Saturday's plan was to get up, have a big breakfast, saddle up the troops and roll down to Ft. Collins, in a car of course, get the bikes out and ride from brewery to brewery, taking tours and sampling the finest barley, hops and malt the fair city had to offer.  The liver is an evil organ and must be punished!

Starting the Odell Tour

John looks kinda happy...

Sampling one of many...

Beauty in a barrel!

We were on a touch of a schedule as we had lined up a SWEET tour of the Odell brewery.  I have a friend, Jeff Doyle, or just Doyle, that is one of the brewers there and agreed to take this motley crew on a private tour of the facility, and what a tour it was!  There is nothing that can describe how truly awesome the tour was other than to keep using the way over played adjective awesome, in the literal sense of the word.  We learned about grains, how high sugar beers make your teeth bad and make you fat, and learned about hops, we sampled beers that will never get released to the public, beers that were not quite ready to be released to the public and beers that were having their release party later that day and I'll tell you that there wasn't a one in the bunch that I couldn't love.  All of them were, well, awesome. I'll finish by letting the pictures do the talking and just say 2 1/2 hours later, we walked out of Odell's happy, very happy.  Our livers were a bit less happy, but it was nothing a little bike ride couldn't fix.

John mesmerized by the
beauty that is Woodcut...

John getting all hoppy!

John & Ginger Bear having fun.

What an AWESOME tour!

Jay and the Ice Cream-Stout float.

The rest of the day was just visits to the taprooms and not actual tours of the breweries.  Our next stop was the Ft. Collins Brewery for lunch.  A well needed break for food to soak up some of the alcohol.  The beer was good, but not mind-blowing like the Odell beer, but the food was great!  The problem with the rest of the day was we started at Odell's and the tour and all the beers set the bar really, REALLY high for the remainder of the day.  After being sufficiently fueled and a little less inebriated, we headed to Funkwerks for a quick beer before rallying the troops and heading to the brewery synonymous with mountain bikes, New Belgium Brewery.

New Belgium!

Nick rolling the stone.

As we rolled up to New Belgium we see that it is somewhat of a cluster-fuck there with about 500 people (and about 200 bikes) there.  We head in and have a beer or two and some of the guys play a game out back that is a cross between curling and shuffle board which was a good time, despite the fact that the place was bonkers.

This is the way I'm doing a bike tour
next time...

One more stop at Equinox brewing rounded out the day, and for me, none too soon.  It wasn't that I was drunk, although I could feel my liver writhing about in my body, but the fact I was FULL.  I couldn't get anymore beer in me cause there was no more room.  A short ride back to the car and we were off to Wyoming and our campsite.

Leaving the Fort and scaring kids
along the way.

Snow Mountains Ride

The Crew before rolling out.

We were up early Sunday to hook up with Bobki and Writer to head up into the Snowy Mountains for a more or less downhill run back to a little town called Centennial.  I had a bit of uneasiness about this ride as when I've been on a Writer led ride before there was a lot of bushwhacking and general being lost involved.  Thankfully there was none of that involved on this day.  The day started at over 10,500' on a ripping descent to a little mountain lake called Bear Lake, which at 10,000'ish feet looked super cold.  And JT could have told you how cold it was as he stripped down, jumped in, swam out about 30 feet or so, did one of those double breath gasps for air that you do when it is so cold your testicles are crawling up into your lung cavity for warmth, turned around and swam back to shore.  When asked, JT said he almost died out there.  We continued on our descent when Writer decided to get all rad and wheelie through some scrub when we were looking for the trial and rip his rear derailleur off.  Some trialside voodoo was performed and we had Writer back up and running, with a lot less gears, but still running.  We continued on to Centennial without getting lost, which was a nice surprise.

The finale.

Ginger Twin powers activate!

A LOT of beer later (seeing a theme here?) and some pizzas as we left Centennial to roll back to get Jay's camper and head home.  All in all an awesome (there's that word again, I need to get a fucking thesaurus) trip, but I did discover something about why we only do this trip every 3 years...we need time for our livers to regenerate.

Next Post: Ramblers take on the Mickelson and punch out their livers again!

Leaving Wyomin'.

Yet another Five-O wrap-up

Another Dakota Five-O is in the books.  My 5th one to be exact and even though nothing has changed about the course in the 5 years I've done it, other than the minor re-route that added DakoTA Ridge, it still never gets boring.  I suppose it has everything to do with the fact that it is a top notch event with a festival like atmosphere encompassed in one day.  Everything from the packet pick-up to the start of the race to the well-stocked aid stations to post race eats to the family friendly atmosphere makes this race a must do every year.

I had high expectations (for me anyhow) for this year's race.  With all the other races I've done this year I had the best fitness I've ever had for this race, so I figured I could "end" the mountain bike race season with a PR (personal record).  All that was on shaky ground starting on Friday as something was going drastically wrong with me.  I felt achy and my stomach sounded like a percolator with not quite enough water in it.  Super.  Two days before the Five-O and I feel like shit.  Now, understand this isn't Shit Cyclists Say or any excuse for my performance, which we'll get to in a minute, but the honest to god truth.  If I woke up Sunday morning and felt like I did on Friday or Saturday morning, I woulda pulled the plug on the whole thing.  Hell, I didn't even ride home from work on Friday, although my Lovely picked me up to go get groceries for camping, but still, I didn't ride home.

Needless to say, I felt better on Sunday morning.  100%?  No, but at least 95%, which was more than ample.  This year's race had riders picking from three starting waves since there were somewhere between 600-700 competitors.  If you thought you were going to be under 5 hours, you went in the first wave, second wave was 5-7 hours and third wave was 7+.  Since I knew I'd be in the 5 hour range, I opted for the 2nd wave.  I figured being more toward the front of the 2nd wave would be WAY better than at the back of the first wave.

Without getting into the monotony of the race (not that the race is monotonous, but my description could be, "I rode over a rock here, I almost crashed there, blah, blah blah") I'll tell you I felt EXCELLENT for almost the entire race.  I went out on my own pace and kinda stayed there for the whole race.  If you're not in the Dash for the Cash and you really have no chance of being at the front of the pack, you set goals like I wanna be at this time, I wanna beat this guy or that guy, which tends to evolve as the race wears on (you know, a guy passes you and you push it a bit harder or you see a guy ahead of you and you push to see if you can catch/pass them).  So I set some goals, one of which was to beat my time from last year.  And I did beat my time...by 30 seconds.  THIRTY LOUSY SECONDS!  Shit.  After all the riding I've done this year and I can only muster beating my time by 30 seconds?  Consistency is a good thing I suppose, but I would have liked to have been a bit faster.  Oh well, at least I felt WAY better after the race this year.  I was completely wiped out after last year and I was the opposite this year.  I guess I could have pushed it a bit harder during the race.

I had a good time duking it out with friends and new aquaintences during the race.  I said I wouldn't get into the minutia of the race but I will tell you about just one exchange with another racer (I don't know his identity).  Starting around the infamous Bacon Station, we started passing each other back and forth.  He'd pass me on the downhill sections, I'd pass him back on the climbs.  He passed me as we exited the DakoTA Ridge singletrack.  I caught him a short time later on the Johnson Fireroad climb, and of course as we went downhill towards the Tinton Trail he passed me again.  I didn't see him again until we were climbing the Passion Play hill where I decided I was going to pass him once and for all.  I reached down, locked my fork out and stood up and hammered (as best I could at 46 miles in) to catch him.  As we descended through the completely decimated parking lot, I was right on his rear wheel.  We went down the last pitch to the final 6 or so blocks to the finish line.  As we were entering the marked off areas for riders to follow into the finish, there were volunteers stopping traffic, and my "victim" slowed up just a tiny bit.  That was my opportunity.  I slammed my shifters up into the highest gear and gave it everything I had.  I went rocketing past him like he stopped.  I kept that pace up all the way down the street, around the corner onto the final straight away and through the finish line.  Even mid-pack there still is a lot of fun racing to be had!

So, Five-O number five is all but a memory now, and a great memory it is!  A fun race with excellent support, an awesome atmosphere and post race festivities, and a great time with family and friends.  I am looking forward to #6 for me and lucky #13 overall!

Poor Lance

I suspect he's got this "Oh SHIT" look on
his face all the time now.

Last week some cyclist named Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against the behemoth known as USADA effectively admitting his guilt in the whole doping scandal/debate.  Now we've got Lance supporters already coming out en masse saying that his quitting his fight against USADA proves nothing and even if he did dope, look at all the good stuff he did for people with cancer, giving them hope and courage to fight.  Two unrelated arguments really.  I mean, his exploits in the Tour de France have very little to do with his cancer foundation other than the fact that he used his "story" to inspire people, but just like actors and actresses, we want our heroes to be the same person in real life as they are on the silver screen, which is messed up.

Then on the other side of this Harvey Dent coin, we have USADA with their bravado and their posturing saying they are going to strip Armstrong of his 7 Tour titles as well as his other small lead up races and give him a lifetime ban from cycling.  Even though the really don't have any authority to do so AND cycling's governing body, UCI, gives cyclists a 2 year ban on their first offense.  And really, what do they do if Armstrong's titles are stripped?  Do they test/go after Alex Zulle, Jan Ullirch (oops, popped for doping already), Joseba Beloki, Andreas Kloden (suspected doper) or Ivan Basso (already popped for doping), the racers that got second?  How about 3rd?  Armstrong was the best in an era of dopers, so when in Rome...or Paris in this case.

Which brings me to the REAL reason for this post.  I couldn't give a hairy rat's ass about what happens with Armstrong and his Tour titles.  Strip him or don't, I couldn't care any less about it and more importantly, I don't know how you could strip him and not give the same scrutiny to every single other racer at those 7 Tours.  Give the titles to the lanterne rouge, I really don't care.  BUT, there is one title that I do care about, Leadville.  Strip that title away from him and give it to a guy who is decidedly NOT a doper, but a real hero and a guy that everyone that rides should look up to, Dave Wiens.  A seemingly all around good guy and a guy that has poured his heart and soul into a sport he loves without getting all caught up in the win at all costs mentality that seems to go hand in hand with the world cycling view, and especially the Pro-Tour/road side of things.  Give Wiens his 7 titles in a row.

So c'mon Life Time Fitness or Ken Chlouber or whoever the hell owned the race at the time when Mr. LiveWrong stole the title away from the true deserving winner.  Do the right thing.  March down to Texas and get your belt buckle back and give it to Wiens.

My mind is a beyootiphul blank.

Here I sit, post ride, trying to spew some crap out of my fingertips and onto this virtual paper, and sure there is some stuff dripping out, but really it's nothing.  Hell, this blog is turning into the Seinfeld of blogs.  It is a blog about nothing.  I went for a ride...there's a post.  I ate something cool...there's a post.  I drank too much beer and peed on my shoes...wait, that actually could be a good post.

This is EXACTLY what my mind looks like right now.

Really, I was working on this post all about the Black Hills Back 40 and life as a mid-pack racer, but I re-read it and it was crap.  Well, I whenever I re-read any of my posts I realize they're crap, but this one was stinking up the joint way more than most, so it sits in my draft folder.  Waiting there like a good little post, waiting to be sprung on the world and have the oohs and aahs slathered all over it, or more likely the boos and blaahs.

I haven't gone away, just regrouping and pondering all the boring shit I've done.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll do something REALLY cool this weekend and I'll have the greatest post ever to start next week.  Or, as the cool kids are saying now;  Greatest. Post. Ever.  But I doubt it.  So, be prepared to be amazed by nothing.  Coming soon...

Stravassholes and the real reason for cycling

How cyclits used to crunch their data before Strava.

If you've been riding a bike for any length of time at all, odds are you've either had, have or will have a servere affliction of number and statistic crunching.  I don't know what it is about cycling or cyclists, although I realize this happens in a lot of sports, but data gathering tends to go hand-in-hand with our sport.

It all starts out innocently enough.  "I'll get a computer to see how fast I go down this hill" is BIG reason a cyclist first gets a cycling computer.  But then, you realize how many other bits of info you can glean from the little 2" x 1.5" LED screen.  Top speed sure, but how about trip distance, total distance, or average speed?  Soon the data on a cycling computer isn't enough and you take the next step to a Garmin (or other GPS based cycling computer) which adds elevation gain/loss, current elevation, grade %, direction, temperature, and more.  Throw in a Quarq Powermeter and a heart rate monitor and you can add your wattage output and make sure your keep your heart rate within a "target" zone.  Whew.  That seems like a LOT of info, but wait, there's more!

I suppose at some point a person was bragging to his cycling friends on Facebook about his cycling exploits of the day when the idea struck him to combine his passion for cycling for his passion for social networking and VOILA, Strava was born.  Now you can take all your information from your Garmin or smartphone and upload it to Strava and BOOM it compares your ride to everyone else that has done that ride (or parts of it) showing you just how damn slow you really are.  Every ride or climb has a KOM status (King of the Mountain for those not in the know) for the person that has done it faster than anyone else.

And just like society's obsession with social networking, a big chunk of the cycling community has become obsessed with Strava.  Strava has gotten so big in the cycling world that someone in San Francisco, or some other big city that has more hipsters per capita crawling around its surface on fixies than we have rednecks in jacked-up 'Merican trucks, got killed in an accident on their bike and his family is suing Strava because it made him want to beat his best time which caused his fatal accident.  You just know that when you're being sued in this fashion you're huge OR you've jumped the shark, which might just be one in the same.

So, I hear it every week at least, "When are you joining Strava?" or "You'd love it, you should join Strava!" or something of the sort.  Well, if I did join Strava, I'd see hard data on just how fucking slow and pathetic I really am on a bike, which would decidedly NOT inspire me to try harder but would make me sad and make me want to drink even MORE beer than I do, which would make me even slower and drink even more beer, which would eventually lead me to quit riding all together.  BUT, then I could sue Strava for making me feel bad about myself and I would win thousands and thousands of dollars, with which I could buy a new bike and I would feel good about myself which would inspire me to ride harder.  All that sounds like a lot of work, so screw Strava.

Actually, I think I know myself pretty damn well and I know I'd get all wrapped up in the numbers and become way too obsessed with it, so that is the real reason I won't join.  I already get too wrapped up in the numbers on my Garmin Connect page, much less trying to see how I compare to others.  And while I can appreciate the desire to be faster/fitter on your bike, all of it distorts the real reason we ride (or should).  We ride for the freedom and the simple joy of pedaling a bike.  Next time you're out on your bike, don't look at your computer or even better, put it in your pocket or turn it so you can't see the numbers and just focus on the fact you're pedaling, steering, and balancing on a bike.  Just think of that, a bike cannot stand up on its own, yet we can balance ourselves on top of it, press down on the pedals and by giving gentle input into the handlebars and by shifting our weight ever so slightly, we now have one of the most efficient forms of transportation ever created.  Throw in some sweet technical singletrack and it should completely blow your mind that we can ride over some of that terrain.

How many people have actually seen the "Knifeblade"?  

If the fact that you can simply pedal a bike or  you can ride a bike off-road where we do doesn't completely amaze you, than think of the things you see when you're out riding.  Sweet locations, wild animals, or amazing views that a big chunk of society never gets to see.  And if that doesn't completely blow your mind, then, well, upload your ride to Strava I guess.  Just don't ask me to.  I'll be too busy enjoying the ride.