Grand Canyon teaser - Annie reveals a mental block

Blocks - we've all had em' at some point - inability to push past a certain point of exertion that you know is short of max, a bout with irrational fear (not to be confused with gut instinct), or times when the brain checks out for a bit at work, etc..... but this one is pretty funny.  I can put Annie on the face of a vertical wall and she's fine, even if she's hanging on by her fingertips.  Stepping over the edge to rappel a cliff?  Maybe timid on occasion, but she'll walk herself over it without coercion.  Leave the ground for a few seconds with a nice soft landing in a pool of water at the bottom - frozen stiff. Training to break through this mental/physical block started right when we got back and has gone great - she's already leaping off curbs.

Speaking of jumping - Annie and I met Jeb Corliss, a guy who's jumped off a few things himself, at the OR show last month.  Got to talking about the South Africa stunt for a bit... I asked him to pull his pant legs up, and it's safe to say that Annie won't be graduating to a squirrel suit after a first hand look at what may be the most impressive collection of scars I've ever seen on anyone who wasn't a burn victim.  Google him if you haven't already seen it.

Enjoy the footage of me and some cohorts heckling Annie while her brain tries to sort through the quandary of knowing these are perfectly safe jumps, pleasurable even, yet not being able to make her feet let go of the ground.

Maui video

Here's the video from the Maui trip. Didn't do a short version for blog visitors so you get the full family archive edit which is a little long. The dolphins are at the end, around minute 16 or so if your wanting the main highlight. Very fortunate morning at La Perouse Bay where we stopped to find people with binoculars watching dolphins about 3/4 mile out. We grabbed our fins and masks and headed out, only to find nothing once we got to where we thought we needed to be. We'd started back when they popped back up - about 14 total that stayed in smaller groups of 3 or 4. It was pretty surreal being out in the open water with them, they stayed around for about 15 minutes without ever acting like they were very interested in our being there, but always keeping about a 10-15 foot space between us. We were mesmerized.

Our soundtrack while on the trip was Xavier Rudd, so his music naturally made it's way onto the video. You're welcome if you're not already familiar with his stuff - exceptional.

Some brief color commentary on a few highlights and the vid:

We got into Maui around 9:30 pm, and rather than drive over to Lahaina and then back the next morning, we just headed straight up to Haleakala to catch the sunrise. We went about 2/3rds the way up the volcano, pulled over next to some cattle, and dirtbagged it in the car to sleep for the night. In the a.m. we were fortunate to get the cloud carpet below the peak that makes for quite a spectacle when the sun makes it's way up the horizon - can't do it justice trying to describe it so won't, nor does the video capture it, but totally unique from anything we've ever seen.

Stopped for a quick hike/run through the Redwood forest on the way down - we were needing something invigorating after the flight out and the early morning, and this did the trick nicely. The Redwoods there were relatively young, so big, but not huge. Cool trail, several transitions from alpine, to rain forest, even some real dry, high desert type terrain on the northern edge.

We had dinner that night with Earl and Sandy. Got a table next to the ocean with a fortunate view of some whales jumping out of the water a ways out - that was a first for both Annie and I. Wasn't a close up view - but amazing none the less to a couple of kids from Utah.

We went pretty hard the rest of the trip - tried to put a little bit of most of it on the video. We rented some bikes and made an attempt at going from sea level to the 10,000 ft summit of Haleakala, but hit cold and weather a little past 6,500 ft' that we weren't prepared for, so abandoned and rode back down. Blow holes, snorkeling, swim approach bouldering, waterfalls, mountain/rain forest hikes, caves and lava tubes, Hana, paddleboarding and surfing, could have used one more day to relax - we came home tired. But truth be told, that's how we like it.

One of our favorite trips ever.



Huge thanks to a couple of our favorite friends - Earl and Sandy, who provided their sweet digs to serve as base camp, thank you again, we absolutely loved it!

Wife's on a tear...

Playing catch up as usual. A few weeks back we jumped into a couple of firsts.

I did my first SUP race - it was a lot of fun. Couple of points of comedy from the morning. The first is my vessel. One of my first observations upon arriving and getting checked in, was that no one else was having to inflate their paddleboard. The second was my form, which was actually ok, assuming a guy knows which way his paddle should face, which would be a fair assumption unless I was the horse you were betting on. Turns out you hold it different than you'd think, and I paddled the whole race with it backwards. The fun didn't suffer one bit from the rookie mistakes, and we had a great time meeting new people in a new to us sport. Not ready to run out and buy a race board, but will do more of these for sure.

After the paddleboard racing at Deer Creek we buzzed over to Park City to get Annie ready for her debut Mountain Bike race in our home state. I'd stuck her in a Mtn. Bike race at the Teva Games a few years back, which was her only previous experience racing a Mtn Bike and was a less than ideal course for her to cut her teeth on. Have been looking to get her going again, so, thought Bob and the Utah State Championship gang's race at Round Valley would be a can't miss event to make sure she had fun and a course she could manage. I also thought I was pretty sure how she'd do, and turned out to be correct....
Similar to her CX season, new and learning the technical stuff that comes with racing on dirt, but it will come. In the meantime, she can pedal pretty damn hard, even for a girl. And I must admit, watching her race from the sidelines ain't half bad. The 8 yr old did a flawless hand up of a bottle, and yelled at her to go hard. So how'd she do? She won her sport class, and even won the big check for the fastest overall womens sport time. Makes a guy kind of proud to get to hollar "way to bring home the bacon" to the chick of the house at the awards ceremony.

Here is also probably a good spot to give props to the Utah State Championship promoters. Aside from the big checks, which is a fantastic touch and a fun little extra something to race for, they put on a helluva race - they're a really great addition to the racing scene here in Utah.
Now, back to scheming how I'm gonna keep up with this gal.....

Iron girl Las Vegas

We were back in Vegas a few weeks ago for Annie's Iron Girl Triathlon. She and a few friends had put this one on the calander late last year and she'd been working hard to get ready for the last few months - yet another practice from the school of Annie that I should pick up on, assuming the getting ready part had something to do with how well she did....

We dropped the kids with Grandma and Grandpa on the way down... big thanks to them for taking them for the weekend. Also saw a certain rider that hangs out in Utah on occasion from team Radioshack with his motorpacing crew out in a place I would never expect to see an elite pro riding - he was way, way out in the middle of nowhere, we spent a while trying to guess where he must have started from, didn't come up with any obvious options.

Some observations from the husband.... and right out of the gate - I must conceed, there are things that suck worse than having to watch a womens only triathlon....

• There is a fashion show element at a womens triathlon, can't say for sure, but got the impression that race attire may have been a little higher on the priority list than at a men's race.


• Funniest thing we saw was the girl struggling to get her wetsuit on.... backwards. Her guy was there helping her, so we didn't want to interfere and say anything, just watched. Saw her just prior to the swim, still on backwards, fidgeting with it as if it weren't comfortable.


• They started the race like a time trial, swimmers going in one at a time in quick succession. Helps the anxiety associated with the mosh pit pack start, but negates the head to head racing in the latter legs where one had no way of knowing who was leading the race or had any idea where they stood. There wasn't a winner at the finish line, it was an unknown until times were posted. Pro's a con's, but most of the girls seemed to like it.


• Chicks are every bit as competitive as bro's - saw some serious race within the race battles both at the beginning of the bike leg and the finishing sprints on the run.

This Iron Girl organization is over the top with the body marking. Counted 5 marks in 5 different areas - I volunteered to do fake or real markings....

In case you didn't notice it's dark in the photo above, the day started early, too early. We drove out that morning around 5:00 - race was scheduled to start at 7:00, and they were hustling people almost to the point of being beligerent, to have them lined up ready to go off on the swim at 7 sharp, which was great. But then proceeded to have them stand in said line for about 35 minutes past 7 while they got the course ready. You may also have noticed we had Annie in a down coat that morning - it was cold, especially for the 800 girls standing around waiting. So what do girls do while standing around waiting...? I know what guys would do... we would start bitching, a lot. The girls, they start dancing... and they had choreographed dances for each song that they all seemed to know... it was an amazing sight - like a flash mob, that lasted 6 or 7 songs. And then they were off, one by one, into the water that was starting to churn decent sized waves once out of the little bay they started in.

I love this girl...

Here she is just after finishing.

The swim was a tough one - it was windy, and despite the TT style start, congested. The hardest transition from swimming, to swimming in an open water triathlon, is learning to get your stroke into a rythym with all the variables going on immediately around you. I've never been able to put a complete swim together. Annie wasn't able to either on this day - she had a hard time breathing between waves hitting her in the face, and got a little uncomfortable in a few spots where it bottlenecked. Turned into a survival swim vs. a race swim, and she grinded her way through it. Once out of the water, she turned it on. Her bike split was solid and she ran a top 50 5k. I was a proud husband and foresee more coed duo events in our future. She's diggin the racing, have to thank cyclocross for igniting that spark, and I'm diggin that she's diggin it - it's pretty darn good to be the guy married to her.

Great Basin weekend part 2

We took a day off between the hike and the ride - I had intended to get out on the Mtn bike and do the trail where last years disaster occured the week before Leadville but we took the kids to the Snake Valley Days Parade instead where they rode the fire engine and threw otter pops.

The parade was in Baker, which is also where the climbing starts on the bike ride. But first things first. When there's a parade in Baker your either part of the 50% that's in the parade or the 50% that's watching it. Also, Baker consists of about 2 blocks, so to keep the parade from being an anticlimatic 5 minute event, you do 2 laps around the blocks, you know, to stretch it out a little bit. It's the only option really, if they add more floats or parade participants to stretch the procession out - you start tapping into the 50% left to watch the procession, and then it get's a little lopsided - best to just do a two lapper apparently. I may add a parade post later.

The work starts here at 5,300 ft.

It's about a 5 mile/1,200 foot approach before the real work starts, which is here. There are a few spots where it levels out briefly between here and the top, and briefly is probably overstating how long they last. In about 100 yards, we got buzzed real close, not by a car, but by this dude.....

It was just off the road, and we never would have seen him if he'd stayed quiet, but apparently 3 or 4 ft on a bike was within his personal space so he made his presence known. Annie had no interest in slowing down, I of course, had to turn around and go back for pics and video - will add ride/snake charming video later if I get around to it. It was healthy, one of the larger rattler's I've seen in the wild. Wasn't another 500 yards up the road that there was a bull snake that was quite a bit larger also just off the road - spent the rest of the day riding less closely to the shoulder, didn't see another one.

Maybe 3/4ths the way up at this photo stop, where you can see the road winding up the mountain below, and the straight road where the ride started way down there at the bottom.

Annie working her way up, it was the biggest climb she's done, and thinking it's probably also the biggest single climb I've done, don't know that I've ridden another route that bit off 5,000+ ft on a single climb. Similar total gain of the AF canyon ride from the house, but would have to stick the S. Suncrest climb at the top of the Alpine summit to get a similar bottom to top climb.

Getting closer to the top, with Wheeler Peak in the background.

The signage is almost as if it where made for cyclists. These elevation signs are posted every 500 ft.

And the trail/lookout signs feature the profile of the mountain, not unlike the elevation profiles that cyclists spend so much time admiring themselves for having ridden. Just don't take that profile at face value - those downhill or level sections you see on that sign - non existent on the road.
Descending back down the approach into the town of Baker and the desert. Have to say, riding with my wife is one of my most favorite things, and the fact that she keeps tackling this kind of stuff with relative ease excites me. I'm scheming some adventures we can do that might up the ante a bit.

Moab Adventure Race Report - 2010

The years first big race/adventure took us to Moab for the AXS series Moab Adventure Race where Annie and I would be doing our first race as teammates, which I thought would double as a funny marriage/social experiment aside from the racing. Both of which went fantastic - no public or embarrasing shouting matches, and a pretty successful campaign on the racing side considering it was our virgin run at this type of race. Race report with more detail than you care for as follows:



Check in: We (Tyler, Jeff, Annie and I) walked into the hotel where check in was taking place, and the first thing we saw were groups of racers huddled around tables and over their race maps. For me, with this being our first rodeo in the adventure racing scene, this was exactly what I was most insecure about, 1- would we be able to plot the course correctly, and 2 - if we figured #1 out, would we be able to stay on course once out there. We got checked in and picked up our race packets, ran into Matt, Laura, and Jeremy, and decided to all meet back at the townhouse to do the mapping together, which I think I was both publicly and secretly grateful for. The plotting exercise was fairly simple relative to what I'd imagined it might be, and I think we were all happy to have the reassurance of concurring bearing points on each others maps to check our work. We had 7 checkpoints to hit the next day, we had them marked on our maps, and from what we could tell, the route followed fairly obvious roads and trails, so the fear of blowing the race due to lack of navigation skill was put to rest that night. Discussion among the group the rest of the evening revolved around how cold the paddle would be, what to wear on the water, transition from boat to bike, where we could ditch the heavy packs without getting penalized, and the climb we'd encounter on the first bike leg up Long Canyon. Then everyone took off and we were left to get the packs and gear ready to go. Race sequence would be paddle, bike, run/rappel, then back on the bike to the finish.


Annie getting tired of checking and rechecking packs and gear, and Brock wrestling with grandma Leslie. My tendency is to overthink the nutrition aspect of these longer races, and I didn't dissapoint - loaded a lot more food than we'd take in during the day.

This is Annie about midway through the paddle, there's a point in all races (if you're really racing) where the race itself transitions from fun to long, regardless of distance. The smile is the giveaway that we're still in the fun stage of the day. We were one of the last to get into the water, but got into a good rhythm pretty quickly. We found the boat to steer better from the front seat, so back seat either skipped a dig for minimal correction, or called out for a sequence change wtih big digs to keep the boat tracking straight.

This is me with my "I'm a bad ass adventure racer who stops paddling to take pictures of myself" look, with the standard Moab cliffs in the background. The river section was all flat water, which is great for a cold morning when getting wet is unappealing. But, the tradeoff of having a calm/dry river leg is having to do a lot of work paddling in lieu of having a good fast current to ride. In those tandem boats, the difference between paddling hard and not paddling hard is somewhat marginal - thinking it will take a few of these races to figure out just how to approach this part of the day. Would call our effort here moderate, and I think it was exactly right for us. It's hard to get in good paddling shape without doing a lot of paddling - and we haven't, so we stayed right where we needed to in regards to intensity. The solo racers with the long creek boats were the exception, they were much faster.

The transition went well, we hit the checkpoint, stripped out of the wet tops/pants, and were on the bikes fairly quickly. First annoyance and rookie moment of the day for me came right away on the bike. I ride a Specialized Epic, which has a fantastic rear suspension setup that can be set stiff enough to darn near replicate a hard tail - it's tuned based on rider weight, and I'd made sure to dial it in the night previous - minus my pack. The pack was enough to make the suspension tune insufficient, and I had that nice squishy sag action that's undesirable in all but downhill terrain going.

Annie as we approach the beginning of the climb, which started at the river and topped out up near dead horse point. It wasn't far from this point that I realized Annie was having a really, really good day on the bike. Should also mention as a side note that her bike is not high end, it's heavy, made from left over tank materials I think - which makes her ride up this section all the more impressive. Long Canyon Road is short for Long, Steep Canyon road - it's a stout climb, with most of the vert coming on steep switchbacks, the kind of stuff Annie's never ridden, for the sole reason of it seeming like a stupid thing to ride up that type of thing on a bike. We tried to get her paced correctly, in a low gear that she could spin without approaching her limit, and I'll be damned if she didn't pedal up the entire thing, at a decent clip, with the exception of one rocky/sandy section that we all walked. Here she is at the top of the hike a bike section, one of my all time favorite race pics of her.

The rappell was just cool, nothing more needs be said. Annie stepped right over the edge just a week after a bout of height reservations on the Angels Landing hike down in Zion.

The run was where the day started to get long, we were fortunate to find out within 5 minutes of starting to look for it that checkpoint 4 hadn't been set out, this information came largely at the expense of a few mens team racers who had gone a mile down the trail before backtracking, thinking they'd missed it. We ran most of it, but true to my running form, I whimpered on a few of the bigger hills and had to slow Annie to a walk a few times. We also ditched off into the trees during this leg, for our one pee break of the day - our first ever tandem pee break.

Once back on the bike, we felt like we were dragging a bit climbing back up to the highway, but tried to push the pace knowing we had a huge downhill run with just a few miles of paved road left back to the finish. Annie saved a huge mistake by calling me back when I'd missed a turn on the paved road, and we climbed the last roller before the gradient plunged back down to the river. The descent went smooth and we spent the last few miles on the pavement recapping the highs and lows of the day, and how remarkably smooth it had gone for a couple of first timers.

In the end, we finished in 7 hours and 9 minutes - or 5th in our 2 person coed team field. We weren't close to the 4th place spot, so no second guessing certain strategies or sections thinking we could have improved our standing, just that cool satisfaction that comes from doing something hard and feeling like you didn't shortchange yourself/each other in the effort.

Post race, flying the Carborocket flag. Brad, that stuff got better and better the further into the race we got. Two bottles of highly concentrated pink lemonade combined with about 60 oz. of water in the pack worked for the entire day without a glitch. Annie loved it too, and looks even better in the jersey.

Takeaways from this one are:

1 - I dig these adventure races, will do more of them for sure.

2 - Would recommend doing your first adventure race with a teammate - can't say for sure, but I think it would have seemed like a lot longer day doing it solo. Although I think I know another who might differ on this opinion.

3 - Annie completely blew me away in regards to her performance. Funny that we're in our 11th year married, and she shed an entirely new light on her physical determination and capacity. It was not an easy day, and she lit it up.

Teva Mountain Games

We're headed back to Colorado this week for more racing. Vail this time. Never been there, but suspect it will be a cool place, and even if it's not, there's going to be plenty going on over the weekend. We'll be racing in the Teva Mountain Games, and this one will be the most gear intensive race of the year - I'll be doing the Ultimate Mountain Challenge and Annie will be making her debut as a mountain bike racer, road bike racer, and mud runner (can't wait for that one). Here are the gear piles...

Shoes & helmets

Race vehicles

Race kits

I know, I know - your thinking "dude, your wife's cool without, but I've seen you run - and since it's probably most important of all, need to point out that you left your running helmet out of the pile". Last time I wore it I got laughed at, seems not that many folks need/wear them, so I'm breaking away...

If nothing else, we should stay busy changing clothes and gear - and it all goes down over the course of two days. Should be a riot, can't wait!

Cycling Great Basin National Park & visit to Papa and Grandma's

Made a late week decision to ditch the rain forcast here at home along with the race plans at five mile pass, and head for the rain forcast out in the west desert, where we could be hero's for taking the kids to visit a few of their favorite people and all the animals, eat a few loaves of homemade bread, watch some basketball with my dad, and maybe get a few rides in if the weather cooperated.

The ride down - Chesney held out longer than Brock, primarily so she could decorate him with stickers. Once her task was over she crashed too.

Heading up Snake Creek on the mountain bikes - you can see the storm brewing up the canyon.

May have to throw some hiking shoes and the climbing gear in a backpack next time up - those walls look like there's a couple weekends worth of exploring on them.
12.5 miles up, steady climbing, start in the desert sage brush and end in the quakie's at the snowline. Longest mountain bike ride Annie's done, and she still has the 12.5 mile descent. She could have done more.

At the snowline - climbed as far as we could go on this day.

The video below is probably the highlight of the post - 1-because Annie's in it. 2 - because Annie didn't get clipped out - and we all know what happens next, and I got it on the video clip. 3 - because it's also got Annie bombing her first real fast downhill - she likes to go fast.

Day two was on the road bikes, with the intention of riding to the top of the park, or as far as the snowline would allow. Annie went out on the town with Leslie for the Garrison Girls night out when we rolled in Friday night and met Chandra - a local happened to be an avid cyclist along with her husband Ben. Worked out that they were able to join us for the ride which was great, they were strong and good company to boot.

Ben, Chandra, and Annie finishing up the approach to the park...

View of Wheeler Peak from a pull off a little further up the mountain....

View of the road winding up the mountain and the base of the valley where the ride started.


Ben at the end of the line, climbed as far as we could go again, only to be turned back by the snowline before getting a taste of the top.
Guess it means we'll have to go do it again.....

The descent was good, did have some gravel on the road that kept your attention and the corners are sharp enough to make you scrub speed, or at least make me scrub speed - so maybe not quite as good as AF canyon, but still, it's something like 13-14 miles without so much as a flat or little roller to pedal up, it's straight down hill, the whole way - and a very worthy reward after the effort of the climb. Finished with some good flat road to spin the legs out on the ride back across the valley to Garrison (dad's house) - tried one good sprint effort at the end and there was nothing left in the legs, they lasted about 3 rotations before officially quiting for the day - they were cooked. Good weekend of riding and company - thanks to Ben and Chandra for the company on the ride, and Grandma and Grandpa White for letting the rats of the rug rule the roost for the weekend. More on the kids weekend 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.

9 years today

And she's been better than advertised throughout the entire journey.

I Love you Annie!