RAWROD rookie

Tyler & Erik along the Green

There are a bunch of good write ups on the ride, here are a few from some veterans:

Dug

Fat Cyclist

Keyes

Adam

Some perspectives from a first timer...

There were some things in the back, or, actually the front of my mind. 1 - A big day on the Calendar in August called Leadville. 2 - This is a hell of a lot further and longer than I've ever even thought about riding my mountain bike. Had put in days like this as a kid on the back of a horse herding cows across the La Sal's, but suppose the horse get's most of the credit for those efforts, although they sure seemed long for a little guy. 3 - Unsure of the unknown - how hard was it going to be, would I make it ok, what am I not thinking of, etc... 4 - This is a hell of a lot further and longer than I've ever thought about riding my mountain bike.

1 - Leadville - will also be a first timer there - and it's looming out there just close enough that I was scared not to do RAWROD, and at least get a taste of what 100 miles on the mtn bike feels like. So how'd RAWROD go in that regard? I'm more intimidated of Leadville than I was before the ride. Got rid of some insecurities, like wondering if I can ride that far, but gained some new ones. Better to know what I don't know in April vs. August I guess. Here were the Leadville motivated experiments for the day..

• Food intake - too light of a breakfast or maybe waited too long into the ride to start eating, or, maybe my body just didn't know what to do in the unknown territory it was in past mile 40, but I felt like I was running on empty starting about 7-8 miles after Musselman Arch and it stayed that way until the lunch stop at Whitecrack. Drank plenty and tried to keep choking down food, but think I undershot it. Lunch and post lunch intake was dead on, energy levels were pretty good the rest of the way in. Fantastic learning experience in regards to feeling out how to eat over a ride that long. Can't say I figured it out, but learned a lot.
• Discomforts - I knew for sure that there would be some discomforts at that distance, but wasn't sure what they'd be. Previous post pointed out the obvious, but got some other useful feedback from the ride as well. Feet - not sure if it was shoes or a recent swap to eggbeater pedals - but the dogs were the first to get a little squirly - starting just a little before Musselman's I was feeling the screws on the bottom of my shoes. That got old real quick, and will give credit to this little discomfort for the temporary paralysis I went into at Ray's Tavern post ride. Hands - Only other bad spot, I ride with bar ends, which give a nice alternative position to move to when your hands get tired on the bars, but they weren't enough, my hands were in poor shape for a good portion of the day. Took until today for that half asleep feeling to work out of them. Legs were good, arms and shoulders were good, back and neck were good.
• Mindset - knew there's be some ups and downs over the course of the ride, so was anxious to see what happened to my motivation, enjoyment, form, etc... through the peaks and valleys. Benefitted from having friends around most of the day, which kind of cheats this experiment, but went off by myself for parts of the ride too and didn't sink into any institutional type soul searching - actually caught myself unconsciously smiling in the middle of one of the sand blankets the elements threw down on us countless times during the day. Felt tested here and was ok with it.
• Little things - wanted to figure out a few little things I should pay attention to that may add up to some importance over the course of a 100 mile ride. Biggest lesson for me here - choosing lines. Given this was Moab, there was plenty of sandstone to ride across throughout the day, but it wasn't the smooth slickrock sandstone, it was mostly the ridgy, washboardy stuff - and it got downright uncomfortable to ride over by the latter parts of the day - pretty sure riding around the smoother edges of this stuff earlier in the day would have minimized some of the discomfort and fatigue I was feeling rolling across it later in the day - that stuff was the most uncomfortable part of the ride for me and think I could have avoided that to some extent by paying attention earlier in the ride.

That's enough of the Leadville race prep crap...

2,3,& 4 - The adventure...and it was one...

Met up with Eric, Erik, Steve, DT and Tyler a little after noon on Friday. Plan was to get down early enough to ride the new trails out at Dead Horse Point. That plan died a slow death as we took a wrong turn trying to find the camp, and spent two hours driving up and down roads we kept telling ourselves (and others) must be the right ones. We burned all the extra daylight we thought we'd have, got some different looks at the rim and it's massive cliffs, and rolled into camp at dusk. Got the tent set up, had some wind so put some extra rocks in corners to hold it down, then watched the wind snap a few poles. It's one thing to break poles on a rinky dink Kelty tent, but you know it's stiff when it does damage to Dug's hefty Springbar tent which also suffered a fractured pole.

• Kenny and Elden's Brats were better than advertised, and the veteran's shared some comical stories of past RAWROD's that included silver dollar sized popped blisters in unfortunate spots among other funny stuff. This really is a fantastic group of people and we had a great time visiting and meeting a few new folks.

Tyler, Erik and Eric tackling a stiff pitch somewhere between Murphy's and Hardscrabble.

• One minor mechanical - that sandstone I mentioned earlier rattled my chain off on a downhill section. It came apart at the powerlink, and was fortunate that Mark came by shortly after and had a spare link, half of which he gave me to make the repair - thanks man. I managed to missthread it, and Mark saved some additional damage by noticing another half mile down the trail and alerting me to it - thanks again.
• The wind was relentless - it started at the asphalt early on in the ride, and got progressively stronger throughout the day. Strongest wind I've ridden in. Could talk about how hard it made it, but was more amused when at one point in the ride, at the top of Hardscrabble where it begins to get less steep but uphill nonetheless, where I got a good gust from behind and decided to test it - I stopped pedaling, and I'll be darned if it didn't blow me right up hill - no kidding, it was rolling the bike up a good 4-5% grade for a few brief seconds - but for most of the day it was fiercly driving against us, with some sandblasting thrown in on occasion for good measure. You had to be there... it was a grind.
• One of the bigger highlights of the day came at lunch. DT had mentioned his legs were feeling it a bit back at the Musselman stop, and we were concerned about how he'd fare between there and Whitecrack. We'd been at Whitecrack a while and hadn't seen any sign of him, and just when we thought the object of the day was going to shift from finishing the ride to retrieving a member of the group, the rear sagwagon truck showed up with him in it. Kudo's to DT for jumping in there, it allowed us to finish the day and was the right thing to do.
• I actually liked the light rain. The smell that comes with it out in the open desert is one of my favorites, and it was nice to have one of the senses invigorated a bit after being beat down by the wind for so long.

Finished the day with Tyler and Dug for the Horsethief climb, made an attempt to middle ring the ascent to get a taste of what Dug might feel like rowing his single speed up that beast, but couldn't hang and had to grab the small ring after a bit.

Steve and Dug at the bottom of the Horsethief climb.

Finished up, binged on chocolate milk which is my absolute favorite post ride/workout food, and then enjoyed the satisfaction that comes from finishing RAWROD - it was a hell of a ride.

We stopped at Rays in Green River on the way back - hadn't had more than just a slight hint at any cramping the entire day - but after sitting down for a few minutes, the motion of pushing off both feet to push my chair/self out from under the table to stand up triggered simultaneous cramps in both hamstrings, which has a paralyzing affect on the victim and at the same time hit's the laugh button on his buddies - suppose I had it coming after laughing at Eric's recurring foot cramps from Moab to Green River. I spent more effort on the pull portion of my pedal stroke than usual during the day after the feet started hurting early on, suspect that's what caused the hammie's to be a little on edge - and to date in my 33 years, that's the most painful spot I've ever had cramp up.

The last bit of excitement came between Green River and Price. We'd put Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in, a part of which was filmed in Moab and contained my weeks worth of work as a movie star, or at least being in a movie with a movie star. Story for another day... Anyway, we've all pretty much nodded off into a light sleep with the exception of Tyler, who's driving. Not sure who it was, but someone, with some concern in their voice, says "whoa, what is he doing" - and it was enough concern that it startled the rest of us into opening our eyes, at which point we all look up to see ourselves drifting to the left of the vehicle in front of us, with cars coming the other direction no more than 50 yards in front of us. We all yell, loudly - "Tyler, wake up - Tyler!!" Literally, the whole car yelling at him all at once, thinking we're going down in a blaze of RAWROD glory. The screaming was loud enough that it even startled Tyler, who was perfectly awake, and making a perfectly safe pass in a passing lane - until the screams scared him back into the lane behind the car he was trying to get around. Tyler is just barely a good enough guy that he didn't pull over and make us walk the rest of the way. Day started 5:30 am and ended with us getting back to home to Suncrest around 1:30 am. The ride lived up to the hype and then some, and then some more, and then a lot more.....heck of a day.

RAWROD - the morning after

Had some soreness after 9+ hours of saddle time yesterday - asked my wife to take a look at the extent of the damage this morning and here's what she saw - hope I'm back to normal before too long.


More on the ride later...

Scenes from the Salt Lake Marathon and Bike Tour

Annie braved her first mass start road ride of the year Saturday morning. She and her friend Marco joined the roadies to ride the marathon route before the runners started pounding the pavement. Here they are post ride at the gateway.

Props to Steve, who wins crew/husband of the day for getting up at 4:00 am to drive them to the start, and then wait the couple of hours for them to come in. Steve's also a helluva bike rider - have spent some time hurting while chasing him around the local crits. Steve and I were laughing about the genious behind this bike ride - pretty good idea for any running race organizer I would think, you've already got the cleared roads/route, may as well offer it up to the bikers an hour before you send off the runners, and try to get them to pay $40 bucks to ride it. It was not short on participants.

I keep a list of thoughts/ideas of stuff that might be fun when I retire from banking, and have some ideas towards founding a race/event promotions organization that I may venture to put together someday. Have seen some fantastic outfits and seen some sorry ones - can assure you there's still plenty of room in this space.

Anyway, Annie and Marco had a great ride, got whistled at, got invited into a paceline, got through the merger with the 5k runners unscathed, and rolled into the gateway safely. Here's one suggestion to the Marathon organizers - you guys have got to run the bikes down the middle of gateway to finish under the official race finish line, here's why. Steve and I sat and laughed to each other at the closing effort some of these citizen ride riders why closing out with at the end of the ride, which was routed around the back of Gateway vs. down the middle of it where the run finishes. We saw some good sprints, and Steve had seen a bunch previously when the early finishers were coming in. This was a big moment of glory for some folks, and I'm not kidding, you run these cats down the middle of gateway, with those crowds lining the streets yelling - your going to multiply those glory sprints fivefold, and by default, the entertainment value for your crowds tenfold. We saw it happen plenty of times with the runners - some get juiced from the energy from the crowds and it doesn't matter if they'd walked the whole race to that point, or had hit it hard and were about to kill over, they come around that corner and it's on, it turns into 45 seconds to capture olympic glory. No doubt you'd get plenty of the same from the bikes, which is maybe the reason behind sending them around back. Regardless - Steve and I had some good chuckles about the glory sprints among other things while watching runners come in.

We split from Steve and Marco and met up with some family - Tom who rode that morning and was there to watch Laurie finish her first half marathon, and Amy and Aaron (who also rode that morning) were there to watch Courtney finish her first half marathon. Congrats to both - they did awesome!

Kylie was so fired up after watching all the racing that she came home, threw on her race gear, which consists of an xterra jersey, filled the pockets with 3 1/2 days of food, and was off. The kids are digging spring, they love being outside.

Suncrest is Fierce

We weren't looking to buy a new place when we drove up to Suncrest the first time - but being the outdoorsy type folks, kind of got stopped in our tracks with what we saw and how it felt like being in some little mountain town. So, we more or less bought it on impulse.

Had no idea we were getting a place that came with it's very own weather system. Here's what we didn't bargain for - or at least underestimated:

Pretty typical look at the front yard in the winter
Figuring out where to put the latest 12 inches of fresh snow is not an uncommon problem
There is an entrance to the house on the level below where Annie and the kids are standing - it's perfectly functional come March or April, but fairly worthless and impassable around the time this photo was taken.
This is what a Super Bowl tailgate party looks like in Suncrest - veggie tray on the back of an ATV. Served during a break from shoveling after church and before the big game.
Not unlikely that this is the 2nd or 3rd round of plowing in a day.

And here's what we did bargain for, but also underestimated. It ain't a bad thing to wake up and go to sleep looking at this kind of stuff out the back windows/deck.

I think it will be 4 years this year, and as pretty as it is to look at, it's even better as a playground if you dig the outdoors. Can't think of many places I'd rather live....

Snakebitten - chapter 2

For the most part, I consider myself a pretty lucky guy - so I don't like adding chapters to this heading.

So, after my previous post on getting a little concerned all over again about the tubular tires I've started to experiment with - I decided to strip them off of the Tufo tape and reglue them with the glue recommended by continental - the maker of my conti competition tires - and you guessed it, they recommend continental glue be used to glue their tires - go figure. But I bit, you know, just in case it actually might hold them on better on top of conti selling an extra can of glue.

I won't beat around the bush. Installing tubular tires is laborious. Stretch the tire. Put a layer of glue on, let it dry, put another layer on, let it dry, put another layer on, then wrestle with the wheel while trying to stretch the tire over it, while it has wet glue on it - yeah, it's like that. But once on, you should be set for a might long time right. That's how it's supposed to work.

So after this process - I got out Tuesday night with Zeph (who recently got caught wrestling something else), Brandon and Tyler - a few of the conmen who suckered me into leadville, and piled it on by making throw my name in the hat for LOTOJA. Once again am crossing my fingers I don't get drawn. Anyway, back to the ride. I put on the Easton Aero wheels with the newly glued tubies on them - thumbs still raw from wrestling the tires on - and head down the north side of the hill to the local grocery store, then back up to meet the gang for a quick tour into Utah County and then back up the hill to get home.

First item of note - those of you who ride suncrest know that when descending the north side, you need to be ready for some wind coming around the second left handed bend on the way down. There's a little there more often than not, and sometimes it can be stiff, which can be sketchy at 50+ mph. I learned real quick that those deeper dish wheels make my bike buck a little harder when that wind hit's it - no fun crash story, but pucker factor none the less.

I meet a guy named Paul on the ride back up who was good company which makes the climb go a little faster, and meet up with the guys. We race down the south side trying to keep up with EB who makes his bike go pretty fast down hills and settle into a nice ride. The tubies feel great, no sketch factor at all. Then it happens. PSSHH. It wasn't pssssssssssss, it was PSSHH - and the whole group heard it. At first I thought it was my front tire, which had sealant in it, which I thought worked great. But no such luck - it was the rear tire, which had no sealant, and no sealant worked about as well as you'd expect.

So before I can rave about the pros of my new tubular tires, I've got a couple of con's to bring up.
1 - Your screwed if you get a flat. Granted- sealant should eliminate this the large majority of the time - but if not, your screwed. No tube to throw in or patch to throw on. The only fix is to carry an extra tire, which you'll need to throw on and ride gingerly home since there's not much besides a tight fit holding it on your wheel. After having to wrestle it on in public on the side of a road.
2 - Carrying an extra tire isn't really that much more of a deal in regards to weight and room than carrying your standard spare tube - other than I think I'd feel a little silly announcing to the group - "uh, hold up once second, forgot to grab my spare tire".
3 - Carrying that spare tire is that much more of a deal on a cost basis. That flat tire I got - it was a bad one, large slice on the sidewall, not sealable with sealant - so the tire's shot, with less than 150 miles on it. Here's the rub - those things cost $100 a pop. Yes, there are cheaper tubies, and I'm a frugal guy for the most part, but not in this case. So yes, I was a little peeved at ruining an expensive tire after so little use, and more peeved about the prospect of having to wrestle a new one onto that dang wheel again - it's currently being "stretched" in preparation for install tomorrow night.

While on the topic of cons - here's another. Cell phone reception can sometimes be spotty where I live in Suncrest - it's great most of the time, but there are moments. So, tire's blown, I tell the guys I forgot my spare tire, and to go on without me, I'll call my wife for a ride. It's about 7:30 and I'm up by Cedar Hills Golf Course - can see my house across the way. In fact, I can almost hear my wife's phone ringing, in my house, while looking at it while calling - but what's really going on in my house - silence - wife's cell phone is sitting on the counter taking a nap, and pretending I'm not calling it. No ring, no indication that I just left my 8th voicemail saying it's 8:30, cold, and I'm standing on the side of the road in cycling shorts and a sweaty jersey - trying to dramatize the phone into working by explaining I'm dipping into a hypothermic state. Still didn't work.

Luckily - the conmen's phone's were working, and after hitching a ride down to the gas station by a sympathetic fellow cyclist - thanks Kyle in the yellow truck, Brandon was gracious enough to drive back down the hill and pick my sorry behind up and take me home. First time I've been snakebitten on a road ride - and think I'm not due again for quite some time.

-- = +, or, Addition by less subtraction

Everything is relative. You ask your neighbor (or yourself) a few months back what it would feel like if his house, retirement and investments took a 15-20% hit at the same time that having a steady paycheck was becoming a source of stress and nervousness, and it would have put a knot in your gut. And for a lot of folks, here they are a few months later wondering if/when that knot is going to go away, and thinking that the idea of only having lost 15-20% of their assets wouldn't be all that bad, if only the hemoraging had stopped there.

Or like back when gas was $3 bucks a gallon. $3 bucks a gallon sucks now, but when you'd paid $4 bucks a gallon last fill up, it was kind of exciting, right? James Paulsen said it best, "hell, I wanted to go dump out the $4 dollar gas I had in the tank, just so I could refill it with the $3 dollar stuff".

Then you've got folks who are in a race against time with this thing, slowly burning through reserves each month, hoping this turns before they finally hit the end of the rope one month when outflow finally breaks the back of inflow and savings, then it's game over. Sad prospect to think that having to start over from scratch may actually be a relief relative to watching years of work get ravaged by this cycle and trying to hang on, but knowing the security you thought you had was dying a slow, cruel death.

Hopefully you've been able to hang in there and have managed through it, and even better, take advantage of some pretty fantastic opportunities. Here's the deal from my perspective..., for what it's worth. Things still ain't good, but the trajectory at which their getting worse is flattening out just a bit, and that folks, is a pretty thrilling prospect, as you've probably seen in your investment accounts over the last month. Is your house gonna be worth less than it is today next month - probably, but it's starting to feel like it's a little less probable that a couple more of your neighbors will lose their jobs, which means a few less foreclosures, which means it'll only drop 2% instead of another 5%. Does a 2% drop suck - yep - no doubt, especially relative to what it was doing back in 06'. But it feels like a big relief today right? Sure does to me.

So things don't even have to get good to run the fear out of the room and loosen up those knots in you and your neighbors stomachs. Less bad is the order of the day, and it seems to be here. If housing prices have been a 2% suckhole to the GDP number, that number leveling off to only sucking 1% will get the cash on the sideline excited. It ain't a gain, but it's a positive. It's a screwy math they didn't teach you called addition by less subtraction, and if you've hung in there, it will be worth your attention for the next little bit.