73 Schwinn Varsity Overhaul

Here's some pics of my current Schwinn Varsity Rebuilding project. What started out as a cheap plan for a winter training bike has now progressed into 3 bikes with the following plan for each:

1. Vintage restoration of 1973 Schwinn Varsity

2. Restoration of 1974 Schwinn Varsity into winter training bike with frame mods to accept todays 700c wheels and powder coat.

3. Restoration of 197? Schwinn ?? into single speed around town fun bike and powdercoat.

It's a long story how this project went from 1 bike to 3, but it's definately a lot of fun fixing up old Schwinn's and learning about Electro Forged frames and general Schwinn history.

Above are some in-progress pics of the Vintage bike, NOS yellow bar tape on order and still a few minor things to do yet, but nearly rideable.

Leadville Pics

Just got a bunch of Leadville pics from Leisa:

Getting ready to head out to the start line.

Around 6:00 am at the start line

Feeling good after the first climb and on my way.

Just exiting the new singletrack addition to the course.

Down from Columbine and headed back in.

Just stopped and got darker sunglasses, Mark is on the right in the red.

Headed back up the singletrack, riding with a fellow CTS athlete.

Leadville Movie - October 22

In case you haven't heard there is a Leadville 2009 movie coming up next week: Thursday October 22. Watch the trailer and buy tickets at: www.raceacrossthesky.com
it looks like its going to be awesome!

2010 Race Schedule

March -

April -

May -
15th - 12 Hours of Branched Oak, Lincoln, NE

June -

July -
4th Firecracker 50, Breckenridge, CO
17th Silver Rush 50, Leadville, CO

August -
14th - Crew Support for Leadville 100

September -

New Domain Name

It's now easier to get to my blog, just type: www.xcmtbjason.com

2009 Goals Recap and 2010 Goals

So the successful completion of the Leadville 100 marks the end of the 2009 racing season for me. It was one heck of a year to say the least, looking back on the year it's amazing I have made it this far. In January when I got into the Leadville camp (and officially into the race), I had no clue what I was in for. This almost seems ridiculous as I've raced mountain bikes and been a cyclist for a long time, sure I was out of shape, but really all I had to do was some dieting and lots of training... Well yeah, really that's all there was to do but each of those tasks was monumental and very difficult! The only other curve ball I didn't expect was the mental toughness, that I had assumed I never lost... or maybe never had...

From a goals perspective, I did everything I set out to do:
1. Finish Leadville in less than 12 hours and earn the belt buckle. Check - did it!
2. Lose weight and get back into shape. Check - did it!
3. Regained mental toughness (not officially a goal, but a noteworthy accomplishment) - Read Silver Rush race report for details, but in that race I decided there was only 2 ways to get off the bike: 1. Finish the race or 2. be hauled off in an ambulance. That's when I found the willpower and mental strengh to keep on going. This paid off huge in the 100 when I couldn't feel my hands or my feet and then hit the tree. There was no quiting until the finish line was crossed or the medics hauled me off...

Those were the minimum goals, and I have to admit that accomplishing them should have been my stretch goals list, but I was overly optimistic last January. So last years stretch goals are now going to be next years goals, and these are:

1. Finish Leadville under 9 hours for the big belt buckle.
2. Lose another 20 lbs to get back to 2003 race weight of 170 lbs.
3. Gain a higher level of fitness than I have ever been at.

and a new goal for next year is:

4. Win the hill climb coin in the Silver Rush 50.

For those who don't know, the start of the Silver Rush race is a hike-a-bike up a steep hill, the first guy to the top gets a gold coin! I figure if I do some running and some hill sprints I'll have a good shot at this, I will of course practice on the hill itself in Leadville, so I am more familiar with the terrain.

Some Quick Notes from Leadville

Since I'm leaving for the British Virgin Islands tomorrow and won't get a chance for a couple weeks to post any pics or a summary on Leadville, I thought I would send out the following notes which I mostly copied from an email I sent to my coach:

Actual finish time was 11:30:15, which was of course better than the 12 hr finish required to get the coveted belt buckle!

Many people were talking about the bottle neck at the beginning of the race, and were worried about how much time they were losing to it... I felt just the opposite, it was a nice easy pace for the first climb and amazingly my HR never got out of hand, (especially considering it was around 170-180 for the Firecracker and the Silver Rush), I felt good and stayed calm and steady around 155 bpm for first couple hours. I would also have to say I was well prepared for this race and most likely made significant performance improvements in the last few weeks as I felt I rode stronger than I have all summer!

I'm sure you heard it rained for the first couple hours and was cold, I'm really not sure where I came up with the strength to make it through that, especially when I could no longer feel my hands or feet, then if that wasn't enough I nailed a tree at the bottom of powerline while attempting to go around the huge water crossing! I hit the tree branch hard enough to knock me off the bike and I nearly face planted in the water crossing, I was one step away from falling in -it was close! I nearly passed out it hurt so bad, it was another 20 minutes before I could even think straight. fortuneately the arm was still useful for holding the handlebar but that was about it, I couldn't lift it much farther than 6 inches from my waist... That was all the bad luck I had, from there on out the race went well, I didn't drink as much as I had planned, but evidently still drank enough, food was much tougher to eact than I expected and I will be changing my plan for next year. I had a few logistical/planning errors, but overall everything worked out well!

Amazingly my arm feels nearly fine today, which is good for the sailing trip as I was worried about whether or not I would be able to do any scuba diving... It is disappointing however that for as bad as it hurt in the race there really doesn't seem to be any damage, this certainly casts a shadow of doubt on how much I really suffered in the race due to the arm...

It certainly was getting a bit scary as to whether or not I was really going to make the 12hr cut-off, around hour 8 is when I really started to fade, I think this is when the good nutrition/hydration plan really came into play (and training), although I was fading I never actually ran out of power, it always seemed like I was getting a second wind and while I was definately slowing, I know I still climbed the final pavement section faster than I did on the first day of the CTS camp!

When Lance came by, he was a flash, he was already down the Columbine climb when I saw him, and we were on a flat section, I was probably doing 18 mph and most likely Lance was doing 25+
Also, on Friday CTS hosted a pre-race dinner where we dropped off our drop-bags for the aid stations. I got to meet Chris Carmichael, so that was also pretty cool.

My friends took tons of pictures, but doubt I'll get any posted until after I get back from the sailing trip.

finished! in 11 hrs 30 min

ust

just saw jason around mile 60...looks good still...would have beat lance if not for that darn tree. -llg

3 hours in and he was looking strong. lance is in 1st and Wiens is 15 min behind him.

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9 hours and counting.....heading to bed and signing off from the roach motel...TBM (text by Maureen)

pic of the motel room this place is a dump ! too many ridiculous things to tell about by text

race meeting was packed!

arrived in leadville around 7:30 am, got checked in and now waiting for the racer meeting to start.

Leadville Nutrition Plan

Here's my nutrition plan for Leadville and estimated time splits, I'm planning for a 10 hr 20 min finish time:

Mobile Texting Ready Also!

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Mobile Blogging (w/pics) Ready for Leadville!

Just figured out how to send mobile blogs from my phone! So now if I can talk my friends into sending in a few updates during the race, you'll be able to keep track of my progress during the race this Saturday. Below is a snapshot of the race food plan send from my cell phone. I'll post an actual readable pic of this plan later.

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Silver Rush Pictures

These pictures are backward if you start from the bottom and go up then they are in the right timeline...

Pictures by Sandra Halverstadt

I look as bad as I felt in this photo, barely able to even conjure up a smile. Only thing I was happy about at this point was that the race was over!
Finished 293 out of 357 with a time of 7:01:37

The sad thing about this photo is that I'm not leading the pack, I'm about to be passed by all these people...

Top of the hill, just got on the bike after hiking up the hill.

Here's looking down the ski hill at the mass start, there was no riding up this hill, you had to carry the bike and hike!

Silver Rush 50 - Mental Fortitude

I talked my coach into letting me do this race as I felt it would be a really good training day and not all that hard. Looking at the altitude profile for the race compared to the Firecracker 50 it had less altitude gain so I figured it would be an easier race and good chance to get more exposure to climbing and 10,000 ft plus elevation.

I never once thought it was going to be the biggest mental challenge I would face thus far this year! This race could have very easily have been another disasterous DNF for the 2009 season, but just when things were at their worst I decided I would be hauled off the course in an ambulance before I added another DNF to my comeback!

So many things went wrong in my preparation for this race and even during the race that today's success was 100% mental strenth and shear determination. After the beat down I have suffered for most of this year, this victory of just finishing this race is a major accomplishment. I knew I would regain the mental strength I had years ago when racing, but I just wasn't sure when. It's nice that I can actually say today was that day, because I really figured that it would just happen over time and maybe months from now I would just randomly realize that it had happened. There was no celebration though. I was so physically exhausted, mentally drained, and actually in physical pain that I was really just glad the race was over. I knew once I recovered and the pain disappeared this race would go down as a great defining moment of the 2009 comeback!

This race was actually a good slap in the face before my ultimate goal of the Leadville 100, (coming up in just 3 weeks), as I'll soon describe in a more detailed write up, the poor preparation and over-confidence I had was not a combination of mistakes that I could afford to make for the 100...

Click here for the Garmin 705 GPS Data link on my Garmin Connect website

Stay tuned for my next posting with more details of what actually happened during the race...!

Omaha Cycling Weekend

10 mile Time Trial - Ave 22.0 mph, 00:27:30, ~31st out of 35, no aero equipment
Criterium - if you call getting pulled finishing then I guess I placed somewhere close to last...
Road Race - DNF

Don't really feel like writing anything about any of these....

Firecracker 50 Pictures

2009 Firecracker 50 Pictures by http://www.vastaction.com/

Firecracker 50 Success!

Click Here for the GPS/HR Data at Garmin Connect

July 4 in Breckenridge, CO doesn't get much better than that, unless your one of the lucky 750 registered mountain bikers for the sold out Firecracker 50 mtb race! As most everyone knows that is following my blog, this year has been a roller coaster ride of a training comeback. Although last weeks CTS Leadville Training Camp went really well, so far this year results have been very sketchy and not at all how I thought they should have been. Going into this race I really had one goal and that was to just finish it. Normally this would be the least of my concerns and pathetic goal, but as said its been a long haul getting back into shape and worse than the physical pain has been the rebuilding of my mental game.

The starting of the race was a lot of fun, I was racing in the Sport 35-39 division, our category (#13) was also staged with the Clydesdale riders, so there was well over 60 of us in this stage waiting our turn to start the race. Each division was started in a neutral rollout that went right up main street as part of the 4th of July Parade in Breckenridge. We were treated like celebrities by the local kids as everyone was lined up along the sides to get their turn at giving high 5's to all the racers. This was a lot of fun, but after about a mile or so the crowd disappeared an it was time to get to the task of racing.

I didn't do a warmup on purpose as I suspected it was going to be challenging enough to just finish, let alone have extra energy to warm up...! The first climb out of Breck, hurt the worst as it always takes a good 30 min for the legs to loosen up and find a race pace rhythem. It also took my heartrate quite awhile to calm down too. Due to the altitude and adrenaline of the race my HR was 105 bpm just standing at the starting line. On this first climb my HR was in the upper 170's, which was much higher than I would have liked it to be at this particular time.

Despite the high HR I quickly found a pace that I felt I would be good for the race. Unlike the local races in Nebraska, I had never been on this course, so everything was new to me, only thing I had done was study the altitude profile to understand how many big climbs there were. This didn't really help knowing when they were coming and when they were going to end though, so the first lap always had a new surprise around the corner! One that that was super nice about this race was the Aid stations that were well stocked with gatorade, water, and Clif bar products. There was an aid station every 6 miles and with kind of support I didn't even bother with using a camelbak. There was just no need for one.

Lap 1 went by rather quickly, if you call 3 hours quick, but hey when your having fun time passes by fast! Some of the highlights were the side by side traffic on the second steep climb, (barely room for two wide), the single track was amazing, but always went too fast, and then there were the descents, usually descents are a time to rest, but not so much in this course, some of them were so steep and rocky that I was glad to be safely at the bottom. OK thats probably over-exageration, especially if you're aware that I have some pretty good bike handling skills, but none the less they weren't a section of the course that I could rest on.

Lap 2 started out really well, I felt good, and I was just hammering up the first climb, I was actually going faster than I thought I should be but my perceived exertion was right on track so I just kept on riding at that pace. Next the second climb went really well, I'll admit my lower back was starting to feel some fatigue and my knees were getting a bit sore, but probably due more to the rain/colder weather (typical afternoon at altitude) than dehydration or fatigue. It was the final climb when I finally started running out of energy. I never completely ran out of energy and had to go to survival mode, but I was getting close. Once past the last climb it was all downhill to the finish line.

Finishing this race was great and then to do it in 5:58:39 was better than I expected! This finish placed me 30th out of the 49 riders that finished the race in our division. As an overall this finish is probably just average, but for the journey I've had this summer, it was a phenominal landmark to getting back in shape and making my comeback!

Lastly there was free food and beer waiting at the finish line. Didn't take much to convince me to grab a glass of Porter and enjoy some BBQ chicken!

2009 CTS Leadville Training Camp

The Leadville training camp went really well this weekend. The camp was extremely well run and the coaches were great, the recon riding experience and information learned was priceless and I can not say enough good things about this camp and the CTS staff that put it on. This camp was very encouraging mentally and gave me a good confidence boost in understanding my physical capabilities, also very remotivating as I feel I can make a very good jump in performance and weight loss before the race. The pace which we were riding puts me on track for an under 12 hr finish, which is very promising for race day results.

Friday June 25
I probably could have rode harder the first day of the camp, but after reading the CTS information on altitude and pacing I decided it would be best to back off more as opposed to less to avoid fatigue. This was certainly one of the smarter decisions I made, I found myself riding by myself more to keep at my own pace, but this was good as I really didn't have the overall fitness to hang with the second group that I riding with. "overall fitness" may not really be the correct term to describe my situation. Here's how the day worked out, on flat sections of the course I had no difficultly keeping up with the group, and really I could have kept up with the first group. On medium to slightly inclined (gradual climbing) sections of the course I struggled to maintain pace and keep up with the group. This is where I had to just stay consistent and ride at a pace I could maintain. I really never ended up too far back from the group, but just wasn't quite there for keeping up and maintaining a comfortable pace. The interesting twist to day is the steep climbs, on our return trip up Powerline, I found myself passing nearly everyone and nearly leading the way up these climbs. My HR was higher than I had previously been riding at, but felt maintainable -really it just wasn't possible to ride any slower, to stay smooth and efficient it felt like the only pace I could ride at. On the medium climbs I originally felt my weight was hurting me, but my performance on the steeper climbs contradicts this. In talking with the coaches, my only conclusion is that I engage a lot more muscles on the steeper climbs and somehow I seem to have a much higher performance efficiency for this type of terrain.

Unfortuneately the battery was dead in my Edge 705 on this day, so its very disappointing that I don't have any HR data for Friday...

Saturday June 26
Saturday was a much different day. After dinner on Friday I was super tired and was looking forward to going to bed and being rested for the next day of riding. Due to the altitude this did not turn out as planned. I never actually slept that well due the altitude and sort of felt like I was constantly waking up periodically all night long. Needless to say I didn't feel well rested in the morning and my second days performance suffered. The Columbine climb really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but my pace dropped me well behind the group I was riding with the day before. About 3/4 the way up, my performance flat lined and I was forced into a survival mode pace. Since there really wasn't any hard efforts or climbing required after getting to the top the rest of the day went fine and I didn't really notice my decreased performance anymore.

I do have the HR/GPS data for Saturday, haven't had a chance to download it yet, but I'll get the link posted as soon as I can.

I had a hotel rented for Sat night also, but decided to get to a lower elevation for the night as there was no need to get another night of poor sleep. This decidsion was confirmed when I tried taking a nap before leaving. I stayed in Denver Sat night with some friends and while I slept better I still felt the effects of higher elevation. Due to my sensitivity to the altitude I am heavily investigating getting supplemental oxygen for sleeping the night before the Leadville race.

Technical skills are not going to be an issue in the race, and actually I found that I seem to way ahead of most people in this area, I was very surprised at the slow decending speeds of a lot of the guys, the CTS coaches kept our decent speeds to a relatively low speed as the purpose was to recon the course and this turned out be very good strategy as there are certainly a few obstacles that could be dangerous if your not aware of them.

Norfolk Road Weekend

Road Race - DNF

Criterium - 15th

No summary to be posted don't really feel like writing anything about these...

Momma Turkey at Wilderness Park

Everynow and then something absolutely crazy happens when your out riding your bike. Today was a new experience to add to the list. In Grand Island, the wind had picked up to probably 10mph and I really didn't feel like going out on the roadbike, or more likely I was just looking for an excuse to go mountainbiking, so I decided I had time to drive to Lincoln and ride my "home town" trail Wilderness Park.
Wilderness Park is where I learned to mountain bike, granted it's flat, but it embraces flowing singletrack like no other trail system I know of, the point is really not argueable with me anyway, this my "home field" and always will be, when riding at Wilderness the whole world disappears and I am transported back in time. It's not until the end of the ride that I realize I'm not in college anymore and instead of riding back to the dorm I have to go back to my car only to drive home and then go to work the next day...
So about halfway through the ride I am zipping along and I come to a small hill that I just can't quite see over, as soon as I can see over it I see there is something in the trail and flurry of chaos is exploding right in front of me, I'm on the brakes hard and basically come to a stop right in front of the scene. It was one of those times when everything was in slow motion, as I stopped I saw baby turkeys scattering and rolling, as I processed what was happening I realized the mom and her babies must have been taking a nap or feeding right in the middle of the trail. When the mom saw me she jumped up which either flung her babies off to the side or they went running too. Thankfully I did not hit any of the babies and as the last one ran into the grass I immediately realized I had a critical decision to make, the momma turkey was about 4 feet to my left and she was staring at me, I needed to proceed forward so I made the decision to make a run for it and keep on going. To pass her I had to get slightly closer to her than I was at the moment, I really didn't know how agressive turkeys could be but as I ran by (carrying the bike) I thought about the fact that they could fly and had claws. My run quickly turned into a sprint as the momma turkey was not happy and was now in hot pursuit, you can only imagine my surprise that she really was following me! Besides running faster several things crossed my mind, the first was maybe I could fend her off with my bike, so I tried to keep it behind me to block her eventual attack, next I wondered how fast she could really run, my guess was that she could probably out run me without even trying, so then I thought well I'll bet she just trying to scare me away from the babies, because if she can run faster than me I bet she would have already caught me by now. That was a comforting thought, but as I looked back again she was still chaing me, really I didn't need to look back because I could still hear her chirping at me. By now I had sprinted at least 50 feet and she was not losing anyground, and I was really starting to wonder what it was going to feel like when she started beating me with her wings, pecking, and clawing, it seemed inevitable... Despite all the training I'm doing, I don't have any endurance for sprinting and I was already getting tired, I took another look back and yep she is still chasing me, my only thought was keep on running maybe once she feels I'm far enough away she'll let me go. Thankfully that is what happened, the next time I looked back she had stopped and was just chirping at me. My heart rate didn't slow down for another mile, by far that is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me in the trails, I was just glad I didn't run a baby over or something terrible like that.

Click here to see my data on Garmin Connect
If you do happen to follow this link and look at the data, check out the HR, there is a huge spike where I encountered momma turkey, it's really obvious, and its right at the 50 minute mark.

Lewis & Clarke Kanesville Krusher

There was no marathon category for this race so I decided to enter the Cat 2 Open class, this is the old Sport class that I used to race in many years ago, despite being old enough I refused to enter the 35+ category. I didn't really have enough time to preride the course so I just checked out the beginning to see what it was going to be like at the start. This was somewhat scary as there was a pavement section that was going to rocket speeds above 30mph and then a hard right into the trails. If that wasn't bad enough, the trails kept going down until you ended up at probably the lowest part of the park, and there was some tricky logs that would not be play very nice as a crowd of riders came screaming over them...

A lot of this turned out to be a non issue as the race was started on a gravel road with a big uphill climb, this sorted out the pack quite well, it's also where I was smacked in the face with the reality of my low power and high weight, I watched the pack speed away and found myself near the back of the 20 riders in the open class and sadly there was nothing I could do about it. None the less I was right about the chaos that was going on in the trails, even though I was probably 30 seconds behind there were several guys that had bit it on those logs/roots and were just picking themselves up as I came by.

The first lap was painful, I was actually probably in 8th place at one point, and the pace was killing me, finally when I could bear it no longer I looked down at my HR monitor and quickly discovered why it hurt so much; my HR was at 191. Good in the sense that my conditioning is coming along well, but bad for this race because there was no way I could sustain that pace...
At this point I just started letting riders by, the worst part was that there was guy with a Tshirt racing and he was in front of me, only a beginner races in cotton. Still battling the mental defeat of the 12hr race, I found myself mentally weak in this race again, I had no plan of quitting, but the thought did cross my mind.

The second lap was an interesting one, it still hurt, and since the race was being ran "backward" on the trails it felt like the whole thing was uphill, there just didn't seem to be any spots to rest and if it did go downhill for awhile it didn't feel like it. On one of the uphills, I noticed a $10 bill on the ground, I was already going so slow anyway I stopped and grabbed it without even noticing I slowed down. This seemed like a good find until I thought about the fact that I paid $20 to suffer like this... The next thing I noticed was that riding this far back (I actually had no idea what place I was in by now - I assumed last) most of the guys I was riding with had minimal trial skills, not smooth at all, but it really didn't matter because as soon as we started climbing they just walked away from me and one guy literally was walking away, he was getting off his bike, and hopefully running, faster than I was riding. After noting the terrible handling skills of all the other riders, I decided to join the crowd by tackling a tree, this is first time ever I have hit a tree so hard, thank goodness is was only 3 or 4 inches in diameter, being so small it moved when I hit it and therefore probably saved me from breaking my shoulder on it. The funny part was that the guy behind me was following my lines exactly and he ran right into the tree also, I guess that will teach him for following me.

Lap 3 was really rather uneventful and the race was finally over, my time was somewhere around 1 hr 20 min, which if I were to have guessed I would have said each lap was 40 min long, I remember thinking on the first lap it was going to be a 3 hour race...

I actually finished 13th out of the 21 guys that started, better than I expected, but not the result I was hoping for.

Click Here for Garmin Connect Data - Lewis & Clarke

My day didn't end there, next I was off to Swanson park to get some more riding in, I put in another 2 hours there, grabbed a bite to eat and then went over to Tranquility for another hour before I ran out of daylight, and drove home exhausted.

Click Here for Garmin Connect Data - Swanson

Click Here for Garmin Connect Data - Tranquility

Potter's Pasture

Mountain biking in central Nebraska. I know what your thinking: "gravel road ride, or just riding a mountain bike around town". That's normally what I would have said mountainbiking in central Nebraska is, but now there is Potter's Pasture about 6 miles South of the Brady Exit off I-80.
I'm not going to say this place is perfect and is a haven of blissful singletrack, because well it's not, but it could be. This place has so much potential it's just screaming for attention, and that's really all it needs. So here's my summary of my first trip to Potter's Pasture and my review of it's current condition and thought's on future potential.

Click here to my 705 Data on Garmin Connect



This is an overlay of where I rode on top of the trail map.

3D view (using Google Earth) with labels of trouble spots
This first picture is a nice blissful view from the top of one of the hills, my point being is that its not flat around here and there are lots of trees!
This picture shows some single track, edging along the side of a hill.
This picture is the taken from campground/parking lot/trailhead alley.
Check out this big guy! I was really hoping it would be a rattler when I saw him on the road, but no such luck, still pretty cool. Notice I took the picture from behind him, that way I figured I could get closer without the risk of getting bit

Garmin Connect

A few weeks ago I bought a Garmin 705, it's a GPS receiver and cycling data logger, it saves all info from the bike, like speed, cadence, and power. Very cool training toy for sure! Best of all the data is available for public viewing on Garmin Connect. Garmin Connect is ran by Motion Based or they are the same thing, really not sure how that works, but either way it allows everyon to go see my data, I added a picture and a link for the 12 hour kryptonite race and the Platte river battle royale race (in the blog posts) so scroll down and check them out. Also, I'll be posting links in all future articles when there is applicable data.

KRYPTONITE

Earlier this week I was convinced that the 12 Hours of Branched Oak race was going to be one of my most triumphant landmarks this summer while training for Leadville. I didn't expect to win, and I really didn't figure I would place much better than the 8 or 10 range I have been in for the Psycowpath marathon races so far this year... I did however plan to ride strong for 12 hours and demonstrate a new level of fitness achievement.This race certainly was a showcase, but it was an Anti-showcase, instead of displaying all my achievements, it showed every weakness until I was reduced to nothing and wondering if finishing Leadville is even possible. As the race started, I found myself riding harder than I should but not at a damaging pace, mostly I was unfamiliar with the trail and was struggling to conserve energy and ride smoothly. Just coming off of a recovery week I also knew it was going to take some time for the legs to get warmed up and not feel lathargic as they always seem to feel after a rest week. That was pretty much how lap 1 went, the weather was a nice 67 degrees and as laps 2 and 3 progressed I fell into a nice rhythm. Several miles of new trails had been "mowed" for this race, and when I say mowed that's literally how they were built, they were in an open field of praire like grass and a swervy path was mowed through them. It was done nicely, but they were rough, I was really thankful I had chosen the full suspension now, these trails were already making my lower back hurt by lap 3 and can't imagine having to ride them on a hardtail. In the middle of lap 3 I realized that the temperature was dropping, which I knew it was going to so I took a quick break, grabbed some food, more water, and put on my second layer of clothes. With an expected low of 36 degrees I knew I would need more clothes later on, but thought I would be fine for the time being. Lap 4 and 5 were ok, one noteable thing on lap 5 was that this is when I was passed by the leaders, they were rolling like a freight train through these trails. I decided to chat with them for awhile and rode their pace for about a half a lap with them. This was a good experience, my bike handling skills were immediately improved as I followed their lines and relearned old skills I had forgotten. Also, I realized they weren't riding at a pace that was that far out of reach for me. At best I could have only maintained that pace for maybe another 2 hours, certainly not 12, but after a half lap with them I let them go and went back to the pace I had chosen that I did feel I could do for 12 hours. Lap 6 was when every thing started to go bad, primarily my feet got cold and amazingly felt numb. Not beleiving this was possible I ignored this reality, but did decide to stop and put on another layer of socks and my winter shoes. As I jammed my feet into the winter shoes I realized they really were numb, but figured they would warm up in those shoes. About halfway through lap 7, I hit one final bump as I came out of the singlestrack and then heard and felt a massive crack right under my rear. Something in the seatpost had moved and the seat now angled up, it was still rideable so I figured I would stop after this lap and fix it at my basecamp where I had all my tools. It took probably 20 minutes to get the seat figured out and back to the right angle. So one problem fixed. Next I needed to figure out what was going on with my right foot, my left foot did actually warm upon the last lap, but my right big toe was numb and felt like your tongue after a novacane shot. I ended up burying it in my sleeping bag and rubbing it to get it warmed back up, finally it was pretty much back to normal, I mustered up all the mental strength I had left, put on more layers and got back on the bike. This whole ordeal took at least and hour probably more... It was somewhere shortly after midnight now and headed out for lap 8. Now I experienced an opposite problem, I had put on too many layers, it's a strange thing being hot from too many layers, it's worse than 100 degrees of sun. With my toe warmed up, I had put on everything I owned for foot protection. 2 layers of socks, winter shoes, and IP shoe covers. This lap was miserable, my feet felt almost warm enough and the rest of me was too hot, my back was starting to kill me. One strategy I had maintained this whole race so far was to use a high cadence, this was not only very efficient at conserving power, it also was much easier on my lower back, and other than the rough trails had worked well so far. On lap 8 I did realize I was out of power to keep this method up, (while still in the middle chainring), so I did have to drop down to the granny gear for climbing, I was hoping to make it much later into the night before this would be necessary. After checking in after lap 8 I made my final mistake of looking at the overall race standings, my 8 laps was pathetic, and I was probably in 40th out of maybe 50 riders. This was the final blow, despite losing all the time to fix the seat and the foot incident, I didn't expect to be so far behind.. It really was obvious why I was so far behind; of the 6.5 hours than had passed, I had only been on the bike for 4.5 of them and at 6 miles per lap, I hadn't even done 50 miles yet, and this terrain was by far easier thanwhat will be encountered in leadville... I was tired, cold, my back hurt, and I was mentally drained. It was a devastating blow to quit, but I did it. I packed up, drove home, and was in bed before the race was over. So I figured I better end this summary with a few positive thoughts as this whole experience has been rather depressing to say the least:


Click Here to see the Data at Garmin Connect

This whole time I thought this comeback was about training, losing weight, and updating bikes and gear, the last thing I had considered was the mental strength that I never realized I had lost. The upside to this whole thing is that I have never done well in the cold, and I don't expect I ever will, depsite everything that happened this night, my legs and conditioning weren't the weak link, yes they were getting tired but they would have made it to hour 12. Also, 48 miles in 4.5 hours does get me to the finish line at leadville, maybe not in 9 hours but certainly the 12 hour finish is possible. Fortunately the race isn't next week, and hopefully this day is as low as I'm going to get on this rollercoaster ride, that I'm calling a comeback.

Platte River Crash

This sort of sums up the day at Platte River, In my previous race summary write-up, I neglected to mention that I crashed on the last lap of the race. Mostly because it wasn't that note worthy of a crash because neither the bike or I got hurt, but as I was searching the web looking for photos this is all I've found so far... That's me taking a dive. The guy beside me is the reason I crashed, he was walking his bike through the rocks, I figured I could just ride around him, but when I got to where he was at I realized he was standing in the line and when I looked for an alternate path I couldn't find one quick enough.

Psycowpath #2 - Platte River Battle Royale

47 degrees is what the temperature gauge of my 4Runner read as I arrived at the race. It had already been a long morning as I really didn’t feel like getting out of bed at 5:30am, now I was at the race and it was cold. I thought about turning around or possibly just parking somewhere else and taking a nap in the car, but instead I walked over to registration and paid the entry fee, after all I was here to race. I was certainly not as excited about it as last week, but mostly I was still exhausted from that race last weekend. I didn’t even warm up, I just made my way to the starting line and decided I would follow the pack into the trails and warm up on the fly. It was interesting that this was the first time I have ever went into the single track so far behind, of the 20 guys in this race I must have been in near last. It actually took some effort to not get carried away passing guys on the first climb, not that I really felt that good it’s just that they were going so slow, especially for the first lap. The first half of the race was worse than any other race I have ever done; I was physically tired and mentally fried. This is a bad combination, nearly every 5 minutes I was thinking I would just call it a day after this lap and throw everything in the car and drive home. I never did of course, but I really wanted to… For lap 1 I wore all the clothes I had with me, I knew they would be too hot for the race, but it was just too cold standing at the starting line to take them off, so I stopped for a few minutes after the first lap and shed the extra layers. For the second lap I then cold, but by lap 3 it finally warmed up to be a nice day. I really thought I must have been in last place by now as my performance seemed terrible, besides the mental issues I felt terrible on the bike, I had no power, and was navigating the trails like I had all the skills of a beginner. Speaking of first times, I did have my new Top Fuel 9.8 under me. Extremely nice ride, the sizing felt good, and I was even using the lockouts on the climb.

Click Here to see my race data at Garmin Connect

Lap 4 is when the race took a turn for the better, this is when all the Sport and Expert riders started. The experts were already gone, but the Sport guys were just starting so I waited for most of them to get into the trails before I rounded the turn back in. At first it was nice to have people to follow and chat with, but I quickly realized they were slowing me down, so I had to start passing. Most of the guys I was passing were in the 40+ Sport category, and every time I passed a guy there was a new rabbit just ahead, this made the last two laps more fun and I rode them much faster. Where the energy came from I really don’t know, I still didn’t feel powerful, but at least I was riding at a reasonable pace.

It took forever for the results to be posted, but when they finally were I noticed that my last lap was missing… I talked to the judges and evidently it was cleanly missed, but they were gracious enough to give me a 5th lap time based on my 4th lap, and when I checked my Garmin with my lap times that was really close to what I actually did. So instead of being in 16th place I ended up 8th, which really seems a lot better than how I felt I rode.

So that was it for training race #2, now I definitely need to start resting and getting mentally prepared for the 12 hours of Branched Oak race next weekend.

Psycowpath Swanson Rivercity Shootout - 2 May 2009

Turned out to be a great day for a race; it warmed up, the sun came out, and the trails were very fast!
Approximately 20 of us started this race (see photo below), I didn't go into the trails too early as I knew I wasn't in that good of shape, so as it worked out, I went into the singletrack in 6th place, which seemed reasonable based on how everyone was riding, it turned out I had one over motivated idiot in front of me who had no trail skills and couldn't hold the pace. He dropped back pretty quick, but I lost maybe 500 feet on the leaders. About halfway through the first lap, another couple guys passed me, so I was somewhere around 8th place, the leaders were long gone and there was a guy not too far off my tail. This first lap was brutal. The term marathon really does not describe this class, it makes it sound slow and long, when in actually I quickly decided this race was going to be more like watching an olympic caliber 1 mile runner (it's a long sprint) and besides that 3 hours really isn't that long of a time anymore in today's endurance/adventure racing scene...

First lap was completed in less than 30min and already I could see the 3 hours going by rather quickly. I quickly realized there was no strategy for this race other than go as hard as possible until it's over. On the second lap I was glad I decided to go with the full suspension bike as my lower back was sore already. That pain was irrelevant compared to how my legs were feeling. I forgot about my love-hate relationship with Swanson; I love the trails, fast, lots of twists, and steep rollers, very smooth, just a great place to ride, but I hate the homefield advantage everyone in Omaha has, I have never done well at Swanson and I always decide the homefield advantage is the biggest reason, midway through the second lap I realized I was using the brakes too much, being too timid around unknown corners, and having to power out of the turn to keep speed -it was rapidly breaking me down!
I tried to focus on smoother turns, and less brakes, but this isn't a skill you develop in an hour. I really just need more seat time on the bike, and it would help if I had some new tires under me that trusted.

In case I didn't mention it; I'm riding my 2000 Trek Fuel, as the guys at the shop didn't want me to break in the new Top Fuel 9.8 in a race, (which is very smart, race conditions are too extreme for break in and if something goes wrong I could potentially damage something really expensive on the bike).
By lap 3 I was settled into a decent pace, the only thing I didn't like was that I was "running" the whole time or being chased, I had a guy about 1000 ft back that was not losing ground on me, normally not a problem other than I knew I was gettings slower due the power loss issue, mentally this was very taxing, but it kept me riding hard as I didn't want this guy catching me. On lap 5 I noticed I was putting time on him, so I thought he would soon be out of sight and out of mind, but then on lap 6 he had some great comeback and was all the sudden 500 ft behind me (or I was slowing down). Everything would have been fine if the race had ended on lap 6, but the way the rules worked as long as you crossed the finish line befoe the 3 hour mark you could ride another lap, it was 8 minutes before 3 hrs so I was on to lap 7, my final lap. What happened I really can't say for sure, but I was not only caught by the guy behind me, but about 2 more riders, and I had no answer to hold them off or even try to keep up. The only couple notable incidences on this lap was a hamstring cramp due to stopping for the Experts to go around and stick in the cassette, neither one cost me much time, so I can only assume my power was just depleted and I was in survival mode to make it to the finish line. I ended up finishing around 12th out of 20.
However I look at it, it was a great day, I have to keep in mind this was a training race, and that is was, my mtb skills are better, I found some new aerobic capicity, which is evident by my smoker's cough, and I got to hang out with some good friends I hadn't seen in awhile.
Sadly, I was so tired after the race I didn't have energy to take the new bike out into the trails for a maiden voyage...