Rabbit Valley Ralley

This past weekend has the first Mountain States Cup race in Fruita, Co. The course's were run out at the Rabbit Valley area and consisted of great single track and dirt roads. Sara had just finished defending her masters thesis on Fri and seeing that this was not her, or mine really, style of racing, took the weekend to ride other trails and take photos.
Also racing was DeathRow Velo teammate Eric Rubottom. Eric raced in the men's Cat.1 19-29 and had a great weekend of racing finishing 5th and 12th in the two races. Great to meet a fellow DRV racer!
On Sat. was the 4.5 mile time trial race. Not having ever ridden the course it made for interesting riding when you are going as hard as you can for about 18 minutes. Using my heart rate monitor I blasted out of the gate and watched my heart rate hit 190 and stay there for the next 18:18.. Brutal! Picked a few wrong lines and got stuck in the wrong gear a couple of times, but ended up 7th in the cat.1 40-49 men's race. All good!
Sunday was the 31 mile XC race. Again, not used to racing this short of race, I was not expecting much. I knew everybody would go out hard and fast. Watching my heart rate climb into the high 180's again, I knew I had to back it off a little and just pace myself for a while. It would have been nice to have someone to work with and draft a little, but, I got stuck in no mans land for the first bit of the race. When the race hit the first steep ie; 20-25% grade I caught up with a lot of the guys.. From then until the end of the race I just got stronger and felt great! Ended up finishing in 2:28.. good enough for 9th place in the Cat.1 40-49. Out of 30 riders in the group I was more than happy with my race!

Sara finished a great 5 hr ride just in time to see me finish and got a couple of photos.

 The drive back to Denver took forever in sleet/rain/snow couldn't see, slick roads.. it just sucked! But, looking forward to driving back over the mountains next weekend for a 1 day ride of the 100 mile White Rim in Moab! Will be nice to hang with Sara for the day and enjoy our time together!

Prosource.net article

This is an article Sara and I did for prosource.net.. our Team Supreme Protein sponsor..
http://www.prosource.net/content/articles/Articles-by-ProSource/roughing-it-adventure-racers-triumph-over-the-wilderness.aspx

More fun in the sun!

Well, Sara, deep in the thick stuff of thesis defense, decided not to race this weekend so it was a solo trip to Gallup New Mexico for the 12hr Dawn til Dusk mtb race. Having been battling allergies for a few days I was not very confident of how I would do and just decided to ride my ride and see how I felt. The mass start on a 5 mile section of dirt road was the only non-singletrack part of the race. With the dust and sun in your face, it made for an interesting start! A couple of wrecks and frozen fingers for the first part of the race. I decided to check my time at about noon to see if my timing chip was working and saw that I was actually leading my catagory.. Well, that made the pain a suffering a little more tolerable and I started out on lap 6 in good shape. The next 3 laps were painful and by the time I finished with 9 laps and 117 miles, I was pretty toasted! But, I had also won my catagory! I guess I need to feel stuffed up, or break a paddle, as in the race in Moab 2 weeks ago, to do well in a race. All in all, a good day!

These are photos from our seasons first race. The Adventure Xstream Moab 12hr adventure race. We had a grea tevent with both Sara and I placing 2nd our solo divisions. Having my dad and brother race as well made for a really fun event. Next up will be th Dawn til Dusk 12hr mtnbike race in NM. I am going to try and keep up to date on our races and training throughout the year on this blog. I may not do it every day, but as often as I can get to it.