The century crew knocked off a last day of February century today with Erik, Brett, Jeremy and new this month Brady following me around a tour of Denver bike paths with a detour over Lookout Mountain. 108 miles and 6k feet of climbing on a nice, sunny, if slightly chilly day. Nice late AM start and sunset finish, sweet.
Looking forward to March boys!
Last Saturday morning saw me up early, driving once again to beautiful Leadville for Winter Race #3. After a nice birthday party on Friday night, much of the same crew packed their snow bikes and headed up for a little fun racing.
Thanks for my new hat mom :) It was sunny and warm enough when we rolled up to the Mt.Massive golf course to check in. This race was a relay and we all managed to find teammates. Erik and Brett were the SS class entrants, Marni and Michelle were the all girl power team and Shawn M emailed me to and I gladly accepted Mr.Speedy onto my team. They started the race at 30 second intervals which made it harder and more fun because you didn't know where they other people were in relation to your position. All out TT effort!
Lap one we got to race around the golf course with Elbert and Massive towering above us. After Marni and my hike on those this past summer, it's always really fun to see them. Plus we could see Sherman too which we hiked with Jessie and Mom.
Brett heading out for lap one.
Michelle on lap one.
Shawn about to blaze lap one in just under 10 minutes.
Marni and I waiting for our turn. We both decided to go 2nd since we would have better setups than our partners for choppy snow conditions.
Erik headed out on his big road lap.
Me finishing up the big road lap.
Post race beers from Dale's, just one of the awesome benefits of doing these races. Shawn and I managed to win the race, big thanks to Shawn's 2 fast laps and no thanks to me crashing on both laps, whooops. Luckily no major injuries, just a bump on the knee and a hole in a jersey. Two other teams were right behind us though with Sterling and Chad only a minute and a half down. I was really feeling my training in my legs and luckily the next race will hit me at a bit fresher spot in my cycle.
Erik and Michelle with Mt.Elbert in the background.
Marni finishing up her road lap. She did so good on both laps!
Post race kiss :)
This guy rode a Muni for his laps, super duper impressive!
The gang.
After the race we stopped into Melanzana and the Ugly Cookie company before heading home. Yum!
The next race is March 8th and it should be a good one. That course took me about 45 minutes last year and this year they're starting at 9am to try to beat the warm up and snow softening on the course. Can't wait!
after!
Thanks everyone for all the nice emails and Facebook messages today, I really appreciate it. Now if you'll excuse me, Marni just got home with some wings, yum!
Me gearing up.
There was another group of 3 already on the ice when we arrived but luckily they were very nice and didn't mind if I setup another top rope. I even got an "Ice screws 101 lesson" at the base of the climb which was cool.
I hiked around back and setup my top rope, throwing it into the trees (ooops) to avoid everyone below me. The rappel down was 3 distinct steps however so it was easy to straighten out my mess. Here you can get a little sense of scale of the lowest and largest of the 3 steps.
Marni was having a lot of fun with the camera and got some really nice pictures of me. Thanks babe!
The view from behind an ice curtain.
Coming off one of many rappels of the day. A 60m rope was just long enough to toprope the lower pitch of Coors Lite as long as you extend the anchors with some long slings.
My tools in pretty soft plastic ice. Good for a first day. There had been a lot of traffic so you could hook your way up most of the time without having to swing.
Climb up, rap down. Repeat until you figure out what the hell you're doing.
Ice does make for some cool pictures. Can't wait to get out to Vail or Ouray.
Wheeee!
I did about 6 laps on the wall, gradually getting more and more comfortable. Swinging the tools was pretty much like I imagined it would be and I had the most fun just hooking interesting features. Getting the hang of kicking my toes in properly took a little getting used to but by the end of the day I was getting it and at least my calves never bothered me so I must not have been doing too terribly.
By later in the afternoon the ice was starting to get pretty wet soo I decided that was enough. I didn't want to destroy anything for other climbers and I was able to climb the most vertical section of each step easily. My last lap I tried some mixed climbing on the rock to the right of the ice and that was a lot of fun too. I felt pretty comfortable on the tools, mostly it will take getting used to the crampons on my feet I think and generally a lot of practice.
All and all it was an awesome day. So many people seem to think ice climbing is scary and cold and just insane but I really don't feel that way. With proper gear, clothing, a little (or a lot in my case...) of instructional reading before hand it can be a lot of fun, at least on easy climbs like this. Sure you should take it seriously from a safety perspective as you should all things climbing but otherwise it's not such a crazy thing.
Until I get my next fix I'm back to playing in the garage but at least I've finally tried it and had a great time to boot!
Singlespeed powa
The land whale makes his debut!
Ah my pretty
Until next time, keep those pedals turning!
And I might have gotten myself a little early birthday present on Friday...
I finally found a good set of tools for (super) cheap. I promise to take pictures of ice climbing session #1 as soon as I find someone to take me out. In the meantime it's making my core workouts a hell of a lot more fun.
Good luck to all the Old Pueblo riders, less than 4 hours to go! Gut it out and get the job done. There are some good races out there, at least from what I can tell by watching the online results. I feel a little twinge of disappointment about not being there but with Moab being 24 hr Nats this year I am starting to think about sacking up for another lap race. Let's see if SS class is rigid only or open to squishy forks? I suppose I might have to get a 29er Reba if it's not rigid only.
Leadville Winter race #2 was this past weekend, thanks to Cycles of Life and the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center. Last year they put on a hell of a race and word must have gotten out as there were 65(!) entrants to this year's event. Being a night race, Marni and I met the gang in the afternoon after a lazy morning and headed up to Leadville. We stopped in town for some coffee and snacks before heading off to Ski Cooper. The parking lot was packed and we got all checked in and psyched to race. I got dressed and out to warm up pretty early as a rest week usually leaves my legs pretty dead to race efforts. I did some climbing alone and then came back to tweek tire pressures on my bike as well as Marni's. The course was pretty fast and there would be a new longer section added this year to increase our race times a bit. Before long we all gathered outside and I did my best to stay warm in my relatively light clothing.
Marni and Erik were queued up near the back along with Bill. Brett drove up with us and was racing too although I never quite found him on the start line, probably too focused on getting ready to race and staying warm.
We had a good crew racing up front again this week with Mark, Doug, Cannon, Chad and quite a few other speedy guys in attendance.
The flag dropped and off we went! I'm always happy to get rolling. After the opening scramble settled down a bit I headed up the first climb with Chad. He got a gap on a steep part where the Endo's spun but I closed back down before the downhill and jumped up into the lead. I could see a bunch of chasers so I tried to keep the bike upright on the crazy steep parts and open up a gap. By the time we hit fish flats another rider had caught me but I pulled away again as the flat section let me turn on the power a bit. The flat section was loooong and I got a good gap on most of the chasers save one, Cannon. He caught me right near the end of that section and jumped away on the first hill at the exit. I tried to close the gap but fatty (aka the Pugs) was having none of it. He snuck away, almost out of sight and the extended chase was on.
We came though the start finish area and I figured he had me but I kept chasing just in case anything happened. I finished up about a minute down to take 2nd place and put another couple minutes into third. After I finished I had to ummm, go get a sock to warm up a particularly sensitive part that got a little chilly out there. Then I grabbed my puffy and cheered on everyone else as they came across the line. Bill rocked out there and soon Erik came though too.
Another minute later and Brett came though. Nice job to Erik and Brett on their singles!
A little bit later miss Marni came through, easy to spot with the Epic Designs pogies on her bars. I didn't want her to have chilly hands and she didn't so thanks to Eric at Epic, the pogies are a success again. Marni had a short lap to go so I rode near her for her last part. She looked really tired but was still climbing the hills really well and caught even more guys on her last lap! I can't wait to see how she does on the dirt this year after a lot of SS training :)
We powered up the last hill for the 2nd time and she headed on down to the finish.
She was the first SS woman and finished midpack among all the girls, I'm so proud of her.
After we were all finished we headed inside the lodge for some great food and an awesome post race party. Eventually we had to head home so off to I-70 and a couple hours later we were tucked in bed. What a great way to spend a Saturday!
You can check out more pictures at the Vail Daily and also check out Michelle's pictures of the race. The next race is February 21st, hope to see a few more of you guys and gals out there!
