A Piece of Our Universe

A bit of catch-up

2012-01-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

Time to do some catching up around here. I fell behind on posting up but for good reason, more on that in a minute. Rather than write a pile of supporting verbiage to get things back on track, I'm going to fall back on the timeless (and quick) pictorial method. ;-)

We have been...

Skiing:

And XC skiing:

And looking for adventures:

And dealing with the new house:

And riding:

And signing up on short notice for the 24hrs of Old Pueblo (in less than a month!):

On a rigid 29'er singlespeed hardtail:

And ramping up the training (rather quickly) means on top of winter riding I'm doing some of this:

Before I continue, just let me say the CompuTrainer (above) was first envisioned by an evil genius during the times of the Spanish Inquisition. He believed it could replace The Rack as a form of medieval torture. Sometimes I would prefer The Rack or a solid flogging, after 6yrs on the CompuTrainer you would think I could wrap my head around those first few winter sessions - it's still hard.

Now for some quick verbiage...

As you can see in the ski video (as always, adjust the viewing quality for best watched in 720P), the boys are really improving considering just a month ago they were on the magic carpet bunny runs. Keegan is all about fast and Evan is all about technique right now.

You can also see a bit of Doreen in the video, her tele has really improved and her tele style is much more graceful than my tele style. Not only is she out-stylin' me on the tele boards she's also hitting the Black Jack skate ski and XC ski terrain on a more frequent basis than I am. Juggling a (very) busy work schedule and outclassing me on the snow, isn't enough, she's also decided to head to Spokane in April with Lisa and the two of them are racing the Spokane River Run. Doreen is doing the 25km race unless Lisa convinces her to do the 50km race (just sayin'). Doreen's stepping up her game!

And in case you didn't figure it out yet, the reason the blog posts have been a wee bit infrequent... well I can only blame myself for ambushing myself with a short notice 24hr Solo race. A concentrated focus on putting in additional winter riding hours has me riding instead of blog posting. The blog has suffered. My legs have suffered. The good citizens of Rossland have suffered, having to watch me ride over pretty much every single street and trail, every day, leaving tire tracks instead of ski tracks. But it's all for a good cause, racing for 24hrs in the Tucson desert should make for an interesting time. Even more interesting I'll be flying down by myself and doing it unsupported - no pit and no pit crew. I've never raced 24hrs of Old Pueblo but it's been on my checklist of things to do for half a decade. I'm looking forward to it. With Old Pueblo added to the mix it looks like I'll get four 24hr Solo's this year, which will put me at over twenty 24hr Solo races, deeeeelicious!

I'll make an effort to squeeze in a few more posts before the mid-Feb race, until then, I'll sum this entire post up by saying... things are good.

Till next time.

Men vs. Women

2012-01-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

A riding buddy (who shall remain nameless) sent me this.

I laughed.

Then I got back to thinking about that creaking noise in my bottom bracket.

Another full day on Red Mountain

2012-01-03T12:51:00.002-07:00

Wow, the boys are improving!

This first video was quite possibly the best day I've ever spent on a hill, not because the conditions were awesome but because I got to ski with Evan and watch him 'get it' at approx 50secs into the run. From that point till the end of the video he was trying to hit everything. I just watched this video again and laughed through pretty much all of it. This was shot with my GoPro HD on a chest mount, as always it's best watched full-screen at 720p HD.

Here's another one trying to follow closely through the jumps.

And the last run of the day through Evan's jumping section, my legs were fried by this point. All the snowplowing and speed-checking is a quadriceps pressure cooker.

Last day of the year

2011-12-31T18:40:00.003-07:00

Spent the whole day up on the mountain.

See you all next year!

Back in Rossland

2011-12-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

After a few days in Red Deer visiting Doreen's family we are now back in Rossland.

I've got photos and stories from the trip but I'm too computer-burned-out to post them up. Doreen bought an Ipad 2 on Boxing Day and I just lost 1.5 days of my life to integrating an Apple device on my Windows network. Uugh!

On a cheerier note, here's some quick footage from today's fun on the hill.

First runs on Rossland's Red Mountain

2011-12-21T23:19:00.002-07:00

The last four days have been a pretty steep (pun intended) learning curve for the boys with an introduction to their first year on a big mountain ski resort. In previous years we've spent our time on cross country skis out in the backcountry rather than travelling to big resorts like Sunshine Village or Lake Louise where there are always huge lineups to ski on wind blasted hard ice conditions. With the ski hill literally on our back door step it was time to get the boys on a chair lift and heading down some steep stuff.

The first day was spent on the magic carpet bunny hill where they had a lot of fun (and a few spills).

Day 2 I took them up the chair lift and had them doing biiiiigggg s-turns and lots of snowplowing, the verdict was "This is fun! Can we go again tomorrow?", hmmmmmmmmm... annual family ski pass - check! Sure boys, that won't be a problem.

Day 3, a repeat of day 2. As an added bonus I managed to start improving my telemark skills, I've got a lot of room for improvement.

Day 4 (today) was a pretty big improvement for the boys. I got them down some green runs AND some blue runs. The blue's were a bit slow but down they went and the best part is they wanted more.

Awesome.

For an in-depth opinion of how good today was I'll turn you over to Evan and Keegan.

Hahaha, ok not exactly in-depth. Here's some footage of the boys on a mix of green and blue runs. It might not look steep on the GoPro HD but it looked steep to the boys. Evan is still a bit nervous from a big wipeout he took on his first ever run down the mountain but he's getting his mojo back and it looks like he's put it behind him.

As always, best viewed in 720 and full screen.

Last run of the day and you can already see their confidence building... and the speed increasing. Looks like I'm going to have to get to work on my telemark skills or they are going to start dropping me. ;-)

I was chatting with a local today who said this is the worst start to the ski season in 20yrs. I was thinking "Dude, there's snow on hill, it's sunny and a ton of fun" but I guess everyone around here is used to huge amounts of Kootenay powder by now. No doubt it will show up over the next month and then we too will understand and possibly be spoiled by the magical conditions everyone talks about.

Bring it!

Skate skiing, telemarking and singlespeeding - what do they have in common

2011-12-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

What do they have in common?

Rossland-Goodness.

Earlier this week I got out for some skate skiing with Vic, 90mins of full-on race pace effort and I was trashed by the end of it. My cardio wasn't the problem but the new muscle recruitment due to my inefficient technique was burning my legs. By the time I got home all I could do was collapse on the couch and shake my head while staring at the ceiling. It was good to be out on the Black Jack trails working that hard, there's nothing like maxxing out the athletic ability to make you feel alive.

Yesterday we all went to the opening day on Red Mountain. The boys have never been on downhill skis before but they did great, maybe the years of Nordic skiing has helped them out a bit. Doreen an I were on our old telemark gear, that was a lot of fun. We did the math and it's been nearly 9yrs since we went out on the tele gear. Totally fun.

Here's a hand-held vid from my Android, trying to follow Doreen and Keegan down the bunny hill.

This morning Doreen headed to the hill for some solo tele while I hung with the boys. Then Doreen and the boys headed over to Black Jack for the Jackrabbit program while I headed for the hill to gets some more time on the tele gear. Big improvements today and can't wait to get some more tele carving in.

After 2hrs of telemarking I went out for an hour of snowy trails fun on the SS. My normal route usually gets me 1200-1500' vert gain for the hour, a bit fatiguing after the tele on the hill, good character building stuff though. Along the way I bumped into Santa, apparently his sleigh was in for repairs and it appears that he also rides a singlespeed 29er when he needs to get from A to B.

Booyah Santa!

An update on the new house build... pretty much all the Gienow windows are installed and the plumbing has started as well as the electrical. The Air Source Heat Pump goes in on Dec 21/22, I'm interested to watch that unfold. All the roofing is complete as of about 2wks ago. There's always something going on at the site. Here's a shot of the boys looking through the living room just before the windows got positioned.

2hrs of riding in Nelson

2011-12-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

We headed to Nelson on Saturday to hang out with Scott and Lisa, always a good time. Doreen and the boys got a bit of shopping in and Evan got to cash in his b-day gift certificate to a Nelson book store courtesy of Scott and Lisa.

While everyone was wandering downtown Nelson, Scott and I got out on the singlespeeds and proceeded to mash out 2300' of vert gain in a couple of hours of snowy trail riding. How hard was it?

Hard.

Scott's tiny 26'er bike was barely visible in some of the deep snow, whereas my mighty 29'er could be seen through even the deepest trails.

Here's a view close to the top of our route.

We did have a few laughs...

On some of the lower portions of the mountain we actually got some dirt. With Scott taking the lead on his home terrain I got to ride a variety of trails like Atomic Speed Goat, Frog Jump, Femur, and possibly others that I forget at the moment. Chasing Scott on first time descents was loads of fun, there's some pretty steep stuff in Nelson, not for the faint of heart.

Good times.

From snow to slush

2011-11-18T03:08:00.001-07:00

My usual route into Rossland consists of...

Down some fun trails...

Today the snow beat me...

The roads were pretty good in town...

More snow tomorrow.

Some new snow and more nighttime winter riding

2011-11-17T14:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry about the background noise from my jacket zipper.

I was running into a problem on this ride that I haven't really faced before. My night lights and glasses were coating over in ice throughout the ride. The air temp and humidity was creating ice on everything. Even my jacket was a sheet of ice. I had to keep pulling over to wipe the ice off my glasses.

Some family cross country skiing

2011-11-14T11:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we all got out for some family snow time.

A nice clear day.

Towards the end of the day Evan and I took a harder return route on a tight trail with lots of ups and downs. He did great on a tough trail.

GoPro HD on snowy singletrack

2011-11-13T11:37:00.001-07:00

We got quite a dump over the last two days so I decided to take the GoPro HD out for a snowy ride. I was curious to see how the Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro's would deal with even more snow and overall they did great.

Best to watch the videos in 720HD.

Hitting Moe's trail was good, though there were a couple of spots where it was a slog.

This nighttime footage is pretty fun once you get to the descending portion which is about half way through the video.

With this much snow on the trails the riding difficulty is determined by approach angles and how much of the snow has been packed down by hikers or dog walkers. I went anaerobic in quite a few spots, making for a really good training ride with an element of fun thrown in. At times I found myself riding into fresh snow just to see if I could tractor through it, most of it was doable as long as I kept turning over the pedals and shifted body weight to create traction. Lots of really low RPM out of the saddle work. Good times.

In the dark zone

2011-11-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

So.

Much.

Fun.

A bit of dark and snowy singletrack

2011-11-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

That's right Scott.

Ice Spiker Pro's.

Get some.

The benefits of spiked tires

2011-11-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I hit the (even more snow than yesterday) snowy singletrack on the Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro's, after two days of riding they continue to impress. The attempt at riding these as a tubeless setup yesterday didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, by the time I finished that ride I was babying a super low PSI, I threw the digital tire pressure gauge on them when I got home and it read 8 PSI.

8 PSI. Yikes!

So last night I pumped the tires up to 40 PSI and left them overnight to see if they would heal up with the Stans sealant. This morning they were flat again. Time to throw in some tubes, which I wasn't looking forward to with the Stans Crest rims. To make things more difficult I decided to go with burly 26'er tubes so the stretching effect of 29'er rims wouldn't compromise the tubes throughout the winter. The low profile of the Crest rims and a lot of rubber made the Schwalbe install... difficult.

There was cursing.

With the tubes in and a couple of chores to complete in town I pointed by bike toward the singletrack. Lots of hard work commenced and I managed to ride dab free but I'd be lying if I didn't mention at one point I drooled on myself.

Once I got on the road at the top of town it was smooth sailing, so smooth I got pulled over by the RCMP for speeding in a school zone. Of course I had no idea I was going over 30 kph, I apologized and got let off with a warning. The RCMP officer was really quite decent about it.

I made it on time to meet the boys at their school bus pickup spot, I threw them a quick "Hi boys" and then proceeded to turn around and race back up the singletrack trying to beat the bus to the drop off point.

Today it was a tie, with the kids offloading just as I pulled up on the singlespeed. There was quite a bit of excitement for the kids as they got off the bus due to the car nose first in the ditch right at the bus stop. Luckily nobody was hurt based on the driver standing next to the car shaking her head.

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of was 'Bet they wish they had Ice Spiker Pro's mounted'.

804 carbide tips of 29'er goodness.

Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival images

2011-10-20T00:26:00.000-06:00

As promised, here are some photos from the Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival. So much fun...

Singlespeed hardtail on the Super D course heading up, up, up. I'm pretty sure I was already going lactic at this point.

Some four bike fun at the Huck 'en Berries Bike Jam afternoon.

Mid-air skilllzzzzz.

Uhmmm, yeah. Wow.

All images courtesy of Vince Boothe: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinceboothe/

Looking for a few good people

2011-10-18T22:05:00.000-06:00

Doreen asked me to post the message below. She is increasing the size of her team and wants to put the word out. Drop me a line if you want to know more: staylor@attglobal.net

"The AMEC office in Trail, BC is growing and we have some great opportunities for good people. We are looking to fill roles in planning, cost control, estimating, contract management, document control, project management, mechanical engineering and piping.

If you or someone you know is interested please let me know. It has been a really good move for our family, we wish we had done it years ago. The lifestyle here is second to none."

Rossland Super D

2011-10-09T22:49:00.000-06:00

Had a blast today!

Ryan Kuhn, the boys from Revolution Cycles, a pile of volunteers and countless other sponsors put on a great grassroots event today. Definitely on the agenda for next year.

Yesterday I should have been putting in a smart pre-race protocol effort but instead I went out for a reasonably hard 2.5hrs of riding, it's not my fault, there was sun on my face and the trails felt great and I didn't want to stop riding. When I rolled out of bed this morning (as late as possible) my legs were still a bit heavy, but there's a solution for that... I hit the caffeine hard, put the earphones in, jumped on the hardtail singlespeed and started the playlist on some old school Beastie Boys, AC/DC and Van Halen. A 30min ride up the highway to the race course opened the legs up and gave the caffeine a chance to do its thing, bwhahahahaha!

By the time I got to the racer briefing I had sweat running down my face and I was raring to go. The briefing went smoothly and everyone lined up for their 2min gap release times. I was third up with lucky plate number 113 at 1006hrs. I got the word to 'Go!' and punched it, I was only 10secs into the course and clipped a root or rock with my pedal during a series of low-grade descending tight switchbacks and went off course a touch (at high-speed) and lost a few seconds fighting to ride it back on track without unclipping from my pedals, all of this in front of Doreen and the boys who just happened to be right at the spot where I almost biffed it. I didn't see them until I had cleared my error and was back on track and I only registered them peripherally. That's what I get for racing on adrenaline rather than focus, 5secs after the mental lapse I quickly rebooted my mental game and raced dab free to the finish line.

Right away I knew the course was in AWESOME shape, tacky from the previous days of rain and quite possibly some of the best dirt since we arrived in Rossland 2.5mths ago. The trail maintenance was perfect. World class dirt. Seriously.

A couple of minutes into the race and I knew my legs weren't going to give a top-notch performance but my head was in the game and so I just turned up the punish-o-meter and decided to ignore the physiological complaining. After nearly 10mins of climbing-racing and a healthy serving of anaerobic effort and lactic acid, things began to improve as the course reached its highest point and proceeded to point downwards for the rest of the course. What lay in store for every racer at that point... a beautiful ribbon of descending twisting dirt for the next 7mins.

Berms... check.

Whoop de doo's... check.

Dirt ramps... check.

Tight hairpins... check.

Rock work... check.

Thread the needle flowing... check.

Tears of joy kind of riding... check.

Anyone who was on that course this morning got treated to a magical trail.

After the race we headed home to relax a bit and I caught up on some athlete files before we headed down to Trail for some Dim Sum at 'Ace of Taste'. That's our second time there and I gotta say it has some pretty good Chinese food.

An hour later it was back to Rossland for the Huck en Berries dirt jump event, some of those guys were catching big air! Lots of 360's, backflips, and other assorted craziness. Definitely not my thing but totally impressive to watch that kind of athleticism. Rory from Revolution Cycles had the tunes blasting and was working the microphone as the riders went down the jump line, I swear he was making up names for some of the stuff those guys were doing.

Awards ceremonies time and I got to hit the podium in 1st place Masters category with a finish time of 16mins and 40-something seconds.

I was racing that course to grab the 1st place overall event placing (of course) but had no idea how my singlespeed hardtail would stack up against the guys with gears and full suspensions. Turns out the bike did ok, sadly the rider let it down today, but I am happy with the 2nd place overall finish. The young guy who beat me in the overall came up from Seattle and his time was better by approx 10secs, I talked to him after the race and he seemed like a real nice guy, congratulations to him.

What's the best thing about racing grassroots events in the Kootenays?

A beer brand I've never drank before, sausages from Star Grocery in Trail (the best) and a Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival hat - I've been assimilated by the Kootenay borg. ;-)

All of us at the top of Red Mountain

2011-10-08T12:30:00.001-06:00

Here's a shot from a few weeks ago of all the gang at the top of Red Mountain. If you look closely you can see Rossland on the right-hand side.

Doreen and the boys hiked up to the top, while Scott and I went riding for a couple of hours and then rode up to the top to meet them. Looks like the boys put on their crazy faces. ;-)

Larch Ridge and Montecola, Rossland Super D race course

2011-10-07T17:37:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I rode up the highway to the Larch Ridge/Montecola trail system to see how the legs were feeling after Sufferfest last weekend. Overall the legs felt ok, still a bit tired but nothing that coffee won't solve. ;-)

(As always, the videos are best watched in 720HD)

At the top of the Larch Ridge trailhead, the course was looking good. Before I left for my ride I had to switch out my front Maxxis Ikon 2.2 EXO after a full year of racing and training/fun riding, it was starting to look a bit like a road tire. I do love the Ikon's but they are on their last legs. It got replaced with a Specialized Captain 2.2 Control that I picked up at Bow Cycle earlier in the year, overall the tire felt good up front.

I like the Larch Ridge/Montecola trail but I was there to see the course conditions for my last race of the year (unless I can make it to another warm and epically long race in the next month or so). I think the Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival Super D is gonna be a fun event! The details for the race are over here http://www.rosslandrubberhead.com/ and hopefully a lot of people show up to enjoy the course.

This is a 15min video I shot yesterday showing pretty much all of the Super D race course. I had to cut out 3mins of the video due to the YouTube upload limitation and most of those 3mins are climbing. If you are only into watching swoopy fast descending then move to the mid-point in the vid because the entire back half of the course is sweet downhill flow. I was going back and forth on which bike to race on, the S-Works Stumpjumper FSR 26'er with loads of full suspension or the Lynskey hardtail 29'er... I've decided to go with my hardtail singlespeed because the full suspension kinda feels like 'cheating', hahaha.

During the quasi-race effort yesterday the 29'er rear Maxxis Ikon 2.2 was sliding around a bit too much so I made the decision this morning to grab something with more grip. I dropped into Revolution Cycles to see what they had and ended up with a Maxxis Ardent 29'er 2.4 EXO. I just mounted it up front and moved the Captain 2.2 to the back. New chunky (humungous) rubber... nice.

They look a bit like tractor tires. Bigger than Scott Legere's entire bike kind of tires. Good end of season ride through anything kind of tires. Gnarly tires. If you see me riding them be sure to stop and say "Wow, those are big tires!", it will make me feel important and more capable than I really am.

The Sufferfest

2011-10-04T00:12:00.000-06:00

Friday we loaded up the Pilot and headed for Kaslo with the goal of some family racing. Doreen was going to do the 25km run, the boys were lined up for the kids mtb races and I was lined up for the 100km mtb race.

Never having been to Kaslo, and knowing very little about the race event organization I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm happy to say the town is cool and worth visiting if you are in the area but more importantly the race director was dialled in! Seriously, Janis the race director along with her staff and a metric ton of volunteers put out one of the tightest multi-event weekends I've ever seen. All kinds of running and mtb events, age categories, different start times, a logistical headache and they made it look easy. A big round of applause to the folks in Kaslo!

As is usually the case (whenever I have a long race coming up) the boys and Doreen proceeded to get the black plague leading up to the event. The boys went down for the count at the start of the week, closely followed by Doreen. Hacking, coughing, flu-like symptoms... awesome. A well established routine of 'uhmmmm I'll take a pass on the hugs and kisses' fell into place and I increased the efforts to keep my immune system running well.

Saturday morning came early, a poor sleep in a noisy motel room left me tired when the alarm clock went off at 0445hrs. I put all my gear on in the dark and snuck out the motel door to hook up with Scott 'Part Superhero, Part SingleSpeed Machine' Legere, so we could ride to the staging area together. In the dark all the bikes got loaded onto a shuttle vehicle and riders into vans and we began the 45min drive to the start point at Sandon an 1800's era boomtown silver capital that is now a ghost town.

A start time of 0700hrs gave us a bit of daylight along with a dash of cold and rain. I'd heard there were 50 starting the 100km race but it looked more like 40-ish, there were some fit looking racers and some unknowns. At 0659hrs we were lined up on the front row shivering, that was about to change, as the gun went off Leighton Poidevin launched an attack off the front that felt like a short course XC race pace. 15secs into the course the dirt turned up a steep hill and just kept on going, Leighton just kept on going, the beginning of Sufferfest.

There were maybe five of us enduring The Leighton, and though I'll admit it was fun in a sick and twisted way, by approx 0704hrs I came to the conclusion that I was racing on a singlespeed and still had 99kms of racing in front of me so I eased back the throttle one notch. I couldn't see the rest of the pack when I looked back (possibly from all the scorched earth and residual smoke Leighton had left in his wake) and so I just got on with racing my own race while maintaining a solid endurance pace.

Scotty had managed to hang on to the Leighton pain train and as I watched him disappear around a corner, dancing on the pedals of his child-sized 26'er, I didn't think I would see him again. It turns out we bumped into each other on the course a couple more times. It's fun to race and ride with Scott, we've done loads of hours together this year and I always look forward to it, perhaps its because I feel much larger on my manly Lynskey 29'er?

Back to the race...

Approx 90mins of racing got us to a river crossing that required a hand-pulled cable car, pretty cool. At this point Scott and I were pushing a similar pace so we decided to ride together and made our way back to Sandon, which had now been converted from the start line into a full support 40km point aid station. With a quick re-bottle we headed out for the 3300' vert gain 10km climb with an average 10% grade up to the top of Jackson Basin at an elevation of 7300'. Yup, that last sentence was a lot of numbers, what it didn't relay is how much time I spent out of the saddle, how many times I drooled on my jersey or how many more notches the suffer-meter went up. By the time I got to the top of the mountain pass I was back to riding by myself, Scott had stopped to take his jacket off and I never saw him again.

For the next 50kms I raced by myself, holding 5th position, with 4 geared racers in front of me. Going through aid stations I would hear "He's only a few minutes up" or "He just passed through" and even though I raced as hard as I could during those last 3hrs, hoping to reel in another spot, I only managed to get within 3mins of the fourth place finisher and I never got close enough to see him on the last chunk of the race.

Crossing the line at 6:25 gave me a decent result and overall I'm happy with my performance. It was a really hard course for singlespeeding, there were a lot of flat course sections out there and singlespeeding required choosing gears for the mountain climbs; combine really low RPM hard sustained climbing and super high RPM on the long flat sections and it's possibly the hardest 6hr race I've ever done. I think anyone who toed the line on that route deserved a congratulatory slap on the back. I'm not sure if the total vert gain was 9300' or 9800' of climbing as the two sources I checked have different numbers, what I know for sure is I'm feeling it today. Was Sufferfest a sufferfest? Put a checkmark in the 'Yes' checkbox.

As soon as I crossed the line I got to hear the boys stories about their kids races which sounded very well-organized and consisted of a great route, as an added bonus... medals made out of cookies which had Keegan pretty stoked. Evan wanted to hang out and know how hard the course was and if I had fun. The image to the left was taken by Doug Pyper shortly after I got across the line and during the conversation with Evan about 'yes, that was a hard course'. Doug's got a good eye and you can find more race images over at his website: www.dougpyperphoto.com

Doreen's Blackberry got this classic photo of the boys in their rain jackets before the start of their race. I hope Doreen didn't let them race with their hoods over their helmets... so not-pro.

A late addition to this blog-post... Lisa sent a couple of nice photos of the boys from their race. The first one shows Keegan after he 'nailed the jump' located just before the finish line (awesome) and the next one shows the boys hanging out together just after Evan finished his race.

Later that evening there was a bit of podium action at the awards ceremony, hopefully the event photographer is using a better camera than Doreen's Blackberry, if so I'll put them up when I see them. If you take a close look at Scott I think it's fairly obvious he is saying "How come I'm the only one up here that isn't on a 29'er?", Leighton looks looks pretty casual considering he discovered how to fold time and space out on the course, I'm surprised his hair wasn't still on fire from the pace he set.

From that point on... beer was drank, food was eaten, stories were told and a fair bit of laughing surrounded it all.

Sunday morning Doreen wisely pulled the pin on her race as the black plague had managed to embed itself in her chest, which is a bummer for Doreen as she had given up a month of riding to train for the running event. With that change of plans we all hung out to cheer Lisa on her 25km run, we watched some of the Downhill racing, and Scott and I took every opportunity to eat any food that was nearby.

By 1430hrs we were on the road to Ainsworth Hot Springs for a family soak and then on the way through Castlegar we struck it rich with an 'All you can eat Sunday night Mexican buffet' restaurant. Post-endurance race jackpot. ;-)

Some Rossland riding videos

2011-09-24T15:34:00.001-06:00

For your viewing pleasure, a little bit of Rossland riding on the 26'er and 29'er from last weekend. Always best if viewed in 720HD. Scott 'can bend steel with his mind' Legere came down from Nelson to hit the dirt, things were going well (for me) until we finished off the ride with a sufferfest up Red Mountain where Scott turned up the intensity factor to 11 during the last 3-4mins. Eeeyowch.

Coffee Run

Technogrind steep direction, not so easy on the 26'er setup with a 34 x 19 gearing.

Decided to switch to the 29'er and its easier 32 x 22 gearing, then headed up Red Mountain to meet Doreen and the boys at the top of their hike, a bit of Scotch (thx honey) and enjoying the views then some of the descent off the mountain.

The descent down Red Top and Red Head, some of my favourite riding.

Some lever action with the Panama Elida Natural

2011-09-22T13:44:00.000-06:00

Getting ready to head to the Rossland Farmers Market in 90mins, so I'm dialling in a couple of different coffees to see what I'm going to pull on the lever machine when I get there. This Panama Elida Natural isn't quite two days old and it still performs like a champ for being so young.

I shot this vid with the Samsung Galaxy S II resting against a coffee mug - high-tech production. ;-)

High Cascade 24 post-race

2011-09-19T00:59:00.000-06:00

Time to do a post-24 Solo writeup...

The High Cascades 24 was a fun weekend, mainly because it wasn't a cutthroat race scene and the weather was cooperative. The solo field wasn't as big as I'd hoped it would be, but it's not always about the amount of racers, it's more about the quality of racers. Quality showed up in the form of Scott 'I'm going to race until my calves get bigger' Legere. Scott was the guy to beat, acting as the quality-racer yardstick, though I suspect nobody in Oregon knew that until sometime around Sunday afternoon. Of course I know what Scotty's capable of and so before the gun went off I had come to terms with racing for second place due to my recently diagnosed anemic condition.

With a medical condition removing the 'performance pressure', I got to race in a casual fashion... well as casual as 24hr Solo racing can be, which made things kind of fun. Approx 12hrs into the race, riding a smart pace and staying on top of my nutrition I had 2nd place in the bag and was feeling great, at the 13hr mark I was a basket case and had to sit down on the side of the trail a couple of times and barely made it back to the pit. I was a zombie. Totally weird. I've never experienced that in any of the seventeen 24 Solos I've done. I made the executive decision that if I wanted to finish the morning portion of the race I would have to get some sleep and eat some solid food, the anemia or something was kicking my ass. So I ate and I slept for a few hours.

Lisa woke me up at 0600hrs and asked how I was doing and informed me that I was still in 2nd place but the 3rd place racer was closing the gap. That's all I needed to hear to get me back on the bike and do a test lap to see if my body had recovered. Apparently the sleep had helped because I was back to feeling normal again. The morning flew by and I was feeling good, I felt like I could race another 12hrs but there were only a couple of hours left and then the race was done.

Sunday afternoon consisted of eating, drinking and standing on a podium. Sunday evening was spent in Bend, mainly at the Deschutes Brewery. Monday we took our time leaving Bend and hit Spokane that evening. By Tuesday morning I was back in Rossland with a pile of dirty race gear and a grungy bike.

A lot of life packed into a weekend of good memories.

Thanks goes out to Scott and Lisa for letting me travel with them, a double thanks goes to Lisa who totally took care of everything in the pit and kept both of us on track which is a big job but she made it seem easy. Lisa should have been on the podium with us.

Ok, I'm all talked out, bring on the photos...

Night before the race in my fairly small 4 season tent:

Sweet singletrack:

Railing a dusty corner:

Speaking of dusty, it was like Moonbase Alpha out there, duuuusssstttteeeeeeeeee:

Gettin' after it:

Post-race Scotty explaining that his calves normally aren't this big:

Scott for the win:

And another podium shot, only to demonstrate that my biceps are bigger than Scott's calves:

When you get 2nd place you get to eat man-sized portions of protein:

First place only gets a veggie burger (see how sad Scott is):

Second place also gets to eat entire pizzas:

And eat regional delicacies:

Second place also gets to drink way more Deschutes Brewery beer than first place (see how sad Scott is):

Now that the race post is out of the way I can get on with other recent news, in the next day or so look for some family stuff and some riding videos from the weekend. Till then...

24hr Solo in Bend, Oregon

2011-09-11T23:00:00.001-06:00

Thurday after the Rossland Farmers market I headed down to Bend, Oregon to do a 24hr Solo race with Scott and Lisa. Road trip = good.

Doreen and the boys stayed back in Rossland as her parents were visiting.

Scott "more powerful than a ray of sunlight magnified through a microscope" Legere, deployed his singlespeed armada at the High Cascades 24 and crushed the competition, securing 1st place overall. I limped into 2nd place overall, happy to have survived "Anemia 2011".

Not bad for a couple of singlespeeders.

At the moment we are in a Days Inn in Bend after hitting Deschute Brewery. Scott and Lisa are both snoring (on the other bed) after passing out to Friends re-runs. I just finished a pile of weekend athletes files.

I am tired.

They are both still snoring.

Nighty night.