Late summer through UTCX #3

You ever go a while without cleaning up and you end up with a pile of dirty clothes, etc... sitting in the corner of the room. That's what this post is, that pile - a quick and dirty clean up of the last month or so....

Annie raced and won the USCS Draper SuperXC - hot, hard day. She won her sport class, and collected another big check for fastest overall sport time. She also ended up winning the series for her class. Fantastic rookie year for her on the Mtn. Bike. She capped the summer off by taking a digger while out riding with her girlfriends, led with her face and head, smashed her lip open, chipped a tooth, and concussed herself pretty good. Took a while for her head to get back to feeling normal - but she came out pretty good for punching a rock with her face/head.

Next up was a Euro trip to Vegas to celebrate our anniversary. Swung through Valley of Fire on the way, where I stalked-ok, guess I can't call it stalked if he's looking right at me, we'll call it chased-this sheep to get within photo range. They grow em' big in the protected parks.

We also did our first hike in a sweat lodge, minus the lodge part - check out the temp. Little excursion to some little water hole out in the sandstone. We had visions of jumping into it until we saw it - putrid.

Here's the euro part of the trip - took a Fiat out for the long weekend - sweet, fun little cars. Think it paid for itself with the savings in gas - don't think we spent more than $100 bucks in gas down and back.
Kids started learning to fish a bit....

Brock finally paid a price for one of his stunts - gutted his arm just under his armpit jumping off a playset where a screw hooked it. Came in crying, didn't pay much attention to him until he pulled his shirt off and saw the hamburger hanging out - then out to the car pretty quick. He'd stopped crying on the way down when I began the pep talk about getting his first stitches. Spent the rest of the ride down listening to him insist he just needed a band aid, to turn around and take him home so he could get a band aid. I love his Rambo spirit.
Next up was Xterra - I had a comped entry for the triathlon, so did the short course. My swim was slow, but a success as I put an entire swim together without resorting to rolling onto my back or breaking form, that's a first for me, baby steps. Rode the bike well, than had the traditional melt down on the run, it was brutal. You probably won't want to watch the entire clip, but here's on board footage of the bike course from a slow swimmers perspective. They've widened the singletrack since I last did this race, so traffic, although it was there, was not the time penalty it used to be, plenty of room to ride around it all the way up. It's a really great course.

Annie raced the 10k trail run, and true to form, landed herself on the top of the podium.... she's ridiculous. This one was literally done with about 4 weeks of total inactivity after the concussion.

This was my favorite pic of from the Xterra weekend - amid the serious game faces prepping for the start, she's right in the middle being a total screwoff. The dude won it though, so she picked a winner.


CX season: Two races the first week at the state fairgrounds. First day was rough for both of us. We'd done some handling and skill practice in preparation, but no top end effort type work. That's never going to feel good, and it didn't.

Day two was more of the same for me. Annie came around a bit and put a better race together - seemed to be back near where she was at the tail end of last year, which bodes well. Decided over the next few days that we'd bump her up to the A flight the following week. UTCX #3 was at one of our favorite tracks, Ft. Buenaventura in Ogden. I raced dramatically better, had some rider error type things - dropped my chain twice and totally hacked the barriers the first lap through, but put in a good start and felt like I was able to ride hard the entire race. Wasn't sure that was going to happen all year after the first weekend.

Annie went out with the A's and got exactly what we were wanting to get from it. She rode hard, paid attention to how things transpired a little differently in that group, and held her own just fine. She also looks very good thanks to our friends over at DNA Cycling. Turns out their women's stuff goes perfectly with her fave helmet. I've got one of their skin suits on it's way, and can guarantee you I won't look as good in their stuff as Annie does, but looking forward to it nonetheless.

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.....

2011 Iron Horse Classic

This annual post always starts out the same..... rave, rave, rave about how fun the Iron Horse Classic is. I'll get to that.

As has become tradition, I raced it again this year, but fairly miserably. I began to wonder within minutes of the start, when the pace was already in my brain - Geez, Are we going faster this year, this is causing more distress than usual this early? Hung on to Shalona Hill, then had my answer when I fell off the back rather abruptly. Went really slow for the rest of the race, I mean really slow. Insights? Yes, I have one. Slower is harder. When your going slow in a race, it's generally not because your trying to race slow, no, it's because your genuinely slow - but the effort to go slow isn't any less than the effort to go fast - your just stuck out there longer when the effort generates less speed. It was the slowest and hardest one I've done, with nothing to blame the day on other than my own limited capacity, indeed it was a perfect day for a mountain race. Despite the slowness, I enjoyed the heck out of the classic route from Durango to Silverton.

Mixed it up this year, skipped the other road Omnium events to do the Mtb race Sunday morning. And, contrary to what I expected, had a little more snap in the legs for that race. Finish was still poor, but slowness wasn't the sole factor, this was an important course to preride, and I hadn't. Critical sprint section going into the final stretch of downhill 1track, and here's another insight - when your the last one to know it's a sprint, your not gonna catch it. I realized I'd made a mistake the second the wave came up when we hit the pavement, and there was no catching it by the time I tried to accelerate. Was happy with how the legs and effort felt though, for the first time this year I felt like I was managing and thinking during a race vs. barely hanging on. Small positive from a punishing weekend.

So back to these Iron Horse organizers. Mentioned they added a Mtn Bike race to the mix this year. Good course, nothing great or spectacular......... until the pro race. That's when, after coming down off the mountain section, they moved the fences inside the restaurant, ran a ramp through a window, and detoured the course through the Steamworks Brewery..... check it.....

Course entered through the front window.....

Here's the exit ramp.....
Deadly Nedley in hot pursuit of the 16 or 17 year old kid that won the race.... Ned had his day the previous morning when he won the road race... again....
The kids races were awesome again... Brock's the Spiderman dude in blue, head down and charging like a bull...
Chesney's into the standing pedal lately, and spent a lot of her race out of the saddle...
Along with Kylie who also came out of the saddle to hammer the short climb.
Racing is only half the enjoyment of the Durango trip - simple stuff like setting out nickles and pennies on the tracks to get flattened by the train, and skipping rocks in the river from the railroad tracks are also among the enjoyments. We always love this trip.
In Silverton after the road race... one positive about riding slow is that you don't have to wait as long post race before they open the road back up to return to Durango.

This was the first of two weekends of racing in Colorado, with some touring of the rockies in between.... more to come.

Yosemite

Had a biz trip to San Francisco a few weeks ago and figured since in the neighborhood it would be a good time to check out Yosemite. Called CA friend Ian to see if he could get a hall pass for the weekend and it just so happened he could. Aside from being a fellow bank dude, Ian's a jack of all trades, from bee keeping to wine making to rock climbing - and knows his way around Yosemite, so aside from having a pal along, I also had a guide.

From the top of Vernal Falls on our way to Nevada Falls - hard to describe the water, never seen anything like it. Will try and add a video that shows the speed at which is was flowing off the mountain - it sounded like a train in a tunnel. A gentleman died in the lower section of the photo above within a half hour of when it was taken - we were rerouted due to the trail being closed when we descended. He was one of two accidental deaths in the park that day.

Down the trail a bit - Vernal Falls in the background.

Yosemite Falls - they say Yosemite is best in the spring during runoff when the waterfalls are raging. It was more impressive than advertised.
This one needs no description.
The trail between Vernal and Nevada Falls.

This is what a mountain looks like when it's watersheds can't hold the water that's on it -
The famous Camp 4 or climbers camp - i.e. dirtbagger circle. Waited in line here early in the morning for over an hour to get a campsite. Demand for any place to sleep in Yosemite far outpaces supply. We had a plan B that we didn't have to resort to, wisdom passed down from veteran Yosemite friends.

The Aahwahnee Lodge - worlds apart from Camp 4, just down the road.

Last but not least - El Cap.... to provide some scale/perspective - there is a climber in that frame.

Here's a closer shot of the climber - see those vertical black streaks - look at the one (black streak feature) farthest right - then just right of the bottom of it - look close and you'll pick him out - I've added an arrow to help. Now go back to the previous shot to put it back in perspective. Yes, it's a massive, massive wall.

We got 1 climb in while there - stuck close to camp on the Swan slab which was a short walk with some quality routes. Unbelievable place, can't wait to take the family and spend more time there, just scratched the surface on this trip.

Easter at Goblin Valley

We headed down to Goblin Valley Easter weekend, in hopes of warm weather and some high caliber easter egg hunting. As has been the trend this year, it was cold and rained a lot, we're batting 1000 on hitting bad weather when we get out of town to escape it - those 30% chance of rain days have bucked the odds every time, without fail. The cool thing about the desert? Once the storm blows over it can go from 35* to 70* in about 45 minutes, and it did just that for us on Easter Sunday, providing for a good afternoon in the hoodoos.

The White chicks doing their yoga poses.
Easter morning the kids finished their easter egg hunt and found the booty stash about 45 seconds before the rain hit hard - we spent the next few hours huddled in the tent playing with their new stuff - which turned out to be pretty high quality time.
The day before was Little Wild Horse Canyon with Jeremy and Mandy and their kids who are schoolmates of our kids.

Log limbo near the canyon entrance.

Brock worked on his hatchet skills, still has all his toes.

Last year at Goblin Valley we were treated to an exceptional sunset. This year, for a brief period between rainstorms, we were treated to an exceptional Easter morning sunrise.

Here's the Honda Pilot ad version...

Goblin Valley has officially become one of the White family's favorite destinations. I took the new Yeti 29er bike out on it's first ride away from home, and found a whole bunch of new country to explore down there. Reminded me how much I love to jump on the bike with no idea where I'm going or going to end up, life at it's simplest, not many things better.

Grit 50 race report

We'd been pretty cold for a while...... somewhere out on Stucki I got cold enough that I thought getting off and walking might not be a bad thing to try and warm up my feet and hands, and it was effective. It was on my walking hill that some of the travel group came back together - Gordon came by, then Banks and Kingdon, and I jumped back on, wanting to make sure good company remained part of the equation the rest of the way in.


Cold is hard to manage on a bike, there aren't a lot of options to try and mitigate it, so you don't manage it, you just deal with it. Annie had my rain gear out at the 2nd aid stop, and I declined when she offered to swap it out for the windbreaker I had on. Would have done that differently had I had another 30 minutes of hindsight available. Soaking wet and cold is a little harder to manage on a bike, and not unlike plain old cold, there also aren't a lot of options to mitigate it, so you also just deal with it - you deal with it a little harder.

That's where we were at the top of Stucki - soaking wet (really, you can't picture how soaked we were), cold, and "dealing" more than racing - but we'd topped out and were headed back down which wouldn't help the cold, but would help progress feel a little faster. That's when we hit it - or it hit us - the mud bog, the first of many, but to give it it's due, this first one was the mud bog. Took 10 yards to gain 30 pds of the stuff on the bike and shoes. It was immediate pushing, then, when the wheels wouldn't roll anymore, it was dragging, carrying, or a number of other techniques I saw to try and get one's self and the bike through the mud bog and the short but steep hill it crawled up. It was here that we started to laugh a little bit, between the cursing that we all conceeded seemed to be more frequent than usual - laughing was the only thing to do really - there are days that are memorable because a trail was great or you felt particularly strong that day, and then there are days that are unforgetable because of the conditions and the amount of "deal with it" required. This day was quickly becoming one of the latter - a day you'd never get yourself in the middle of on purpose, yet there we all were, a raceful of us caught out there in a hard, cold, desert rainstorm, grinding it out.

I thought the cold started to let up a bit, was able to recover some from feeling nothing more than stubs on the end of my arms that couldn't shift or brake without guiding the contact points there with your eyes - but the rain didn't let up, and however poor the condition of the riders at that point, it was those trails that were getting the worst of it. I don't know how long it will take them to be good again, but suspect it will be a long time, they were ravaged. We rode and pushed and laughed and limped along till a race staffer informed us it was over and to pack it in. So we turned and rode back to the finish.

The days race turned out to be one against the weather, and only the select few uberfast guys beat it. Hat's off to them. To the rest of us that stayed out till they were pulled off - no less respect, I thought the guts to grind in those conditions was a better satisfaction than anything a results sheet could have provided. I fall into the camp that thought the race promoter did one hell of a job in a situation where it was impossible to make the right decision for every racer out on the course. Have some friends who came out on the short end of the decision, but think it was the best for the most - kudo's to Cimarron and crew - thought they executed really well.

Photo's in no particular order...






The day made for a great commercial for the Look Quartz pedals - use them for both MTB and CX - waited to have a problem getting in/out of them all day but they were extremely efficient in clearing mud - never had an issue.

Don't know if I can attribute the saddle sores to these dirt clods I didn't know I was sitting on, or the lack of saddle time I took into the race, but I've got a few more than a few that I'm "dealing with".

Tyler and his crew along with Banks. Tyler had the toughest go of any of us - snapped his rear derailer off in the mud.

Kingdon - dude rode strong.

Banks and Super Crewer wife Karee. Banks rode strong and kept me positive Post race - Gordon-who also rode like a bull, Kingdon, Banks and myself - it was fun and merited smiles, it was just a unique fun.

The ill fated ride away from the 2nd aid stop from where my wife took this shot - while holding my rain jacket that I'd told her to keep. Less than 30 minutes away from conditions going real south real quick. Next up for me will be Cortez, and have a pretty dramatic amount of bike fitness to gain if that's going to be a good outing.