Deer Creek in the middle?

Normally I wouldn't blog anything about such an ordinary ride, but this was a very extraordinary experience. I decided to step up the level of difficulty and not allow myself the option of using my granny gear for the entire ride. Going middle chainring the whole way would be something pretty cool to take home.


Well, I not only pulled it off, but it wasn't that bad. I road the entire figure 8 (minus "the wall") in my middle. Those who have ridden know what the figure 8 is all about. The nasty-ass little climb (right before the wall) that most people walk... middle chainring. The climb to Red Mesa loop... middle chainring. The stupid steep doubletrack up the other side... middle! The entire thing, start to finish, was ridden in my middle. Must have been the sleeve of cinnamon rolls I ate the day of. LOL! Now that I've knocked out Buffalo Creek and Deer Creek in my middle, I suppose Mt. Falcon is next on my list. Boyeah!

Firecracker 50!

About a year ago my buddy Cynthia swore she and I would ride as a coed team in the FC50 in 2008. Thinking she would forget all about it I felt pretty safe entertaining that thought. As much as I hoped she would forget, she did not; a few months back she reminded. Damn! So I really started hitting it hard. Much harder than the Kokopelli. I knew all I had to do was go as hard as I could for 25 miles and Cynthia would do the rest. Sounds easy until you consider that 25 miles included 5400 feet of elevation gain and a course I've never ridden. Doh!

Cynthia really wanted me to do the first lap so I could experience the rush of the crowd. What a rush it was! Such a rush that as the race started (toward the end of Main St), I looked at my heart rate and it was racing at 178! I was barely pedaling and nearing my zone 4. Probably nerves, but I couldn't get my heart rate under control for almost an hour. The entire climb up Boreas Pass road, my HR stayed around 184. During this time, I am pedaling like crazy in my big ring and getting passed by way too many riders. I see a couple riders with 23 written on their leg (my group) and unfortunately I couldn't do a damn thing about it. My HR is sky-rocketing and I was getting passed by more riders than I was passing. Very deflating. It wasn't until the first downhill section that my spirits lifted and I started catching a ton of people. I consider my technical/downhill to be right up there with some of the best, so this was a welcome site for me. Some pretty gnarly stuff and pretty crazy to see so many people blowing up all around me. I must have seen 30 people wreck, picking themselves up, and or changing flat tires. What an awesome feeling to shoot gaps of people turning into complete yard sales. At the half way point, all I did was picked people off. Not sure if anyone else passed from this point on so I must have really picked it up. I started feeling so much better about everything. Wish I could have found this pace in the beginning. Toward the middle/end, I really found my legs and gave it everything I had. I didn't want to have anything left in the tank when I was done. The last 5 miles was pretty much all down hill, so I picked off close to 25 riders. Tons of riders were lost (due to flipping over their bars) on the super steep singletrack that was littered with switchbacks.

Here's a shot of me sprinting like mad across the finish line. Cynthia's boyfriend Dave was right there. Thanks Dave! To the right is my partner, all bloody and full of dirt. She is one tough chick! We ended up finishing 12th out of 27 teams in the coed sport class. I suppose that's not bad when you consider we're racing against some top riders and we finished in the upper middle of those top riders. Our combined time was 5:45:04. Cynthia keeps telling me that's good, but I don't believe her.

To sum things up, I felt like I road at a brutal pace, riding mostly in my middle and upper chainring. I am not sure if I could have done anything different other than pre-riding the course and somehow managing my nerves better. Ridding myself of nerves shouldn't be too hard in the future as now I know what to expect. I stayed vertical the whole time (had only 3 "oh shit" moments) and did not stop for anything. Road straight through the entire thing as hard as I could. For my first race ever, I picked one of the toughest out there. Where do I go from here? I not only plan on riding this again next year with Cynthia, but I plan on shaving 30 min off my time. I will not rest until we earn a spot on the podium. :-)

Buffalo Creek (via Pine Valley)

Ahhh... One of my favorite rides when approaching things from the Pine Valley parking lot. After years of riding practically every foot of this trail, we have pretty much found the sweet spot of loops.

Here's the route we typically take:

Up Strawberry Jack to Charlie's cutoff. Hang a left and about half way down, we always hit our favorite little chute that always gives us that extra "oh shit" moment. Once we're done scaring ourselves, we keep heading down Charlie's cutoff to Homestead. We hang a right and descend down to Miller Gulch. Hang a sharp right (easy to miss, as this is a burn zone). We head down Miller Gulch and hang a left to Gashouse. Descending down this is an absolute blast! No brakes, just lots of adrenaline. Follow the trail to Baldy and prep yourself for a great climb. I used to think this was nasty, but over the years my benchmark keeps moving around. At this point in the ride, my legs are strong and I haven't moved out of my middle chain ring. That's right folks, this entire ride can be knocked out in your middle chain ring. My fitness level right now is pretty insane, as I've been riding 3-4 times per week (combo of road and mtb), so that probably helps. Anyway, the trip back is pretty simple and mostly downhill the whole way to the parking lot. Strawberry Jack is a blast to blast down.

Total distance is ~22 miles? I'm guessing here. My total ride time was 2 hours 10 minutes. That middle chain ring really moved my ass...

If you want a cool map, click here.

Kokopelli 2008

Hmmm... I'm still trying to fully process this experience, as it was quite a trip! Mentally and physically exhausting, but overall a great accomplishment. The Kokopelli is a trail that spans ~142 miles from Loma, CO (outside of Fruita) all the way to the biking mecca of Moab. Seems like most bikers approach it from this direction, although many have done this in reverse starting in Moab. My buddies and I joined Bikerpelli Sports, as they provide a fully supported trip over a 3 days.

Day 1 (technical day) - I felt right at home at the beginning of this ride, as I've ridden Mary's Loop several times, along with Lion's Loop. This is some fun and technical single track that puts your skills to the test. Only a couple hours into the ride, we're having a great time, blasting through all sorts of technical sections and the rain decides come in. Normally this isn't a big deal, as we're always prepared to get wet. The only problem is that lovely soil in Fruita turns into concrete when it gets wet. Within 5-10 minutes, we have heavy, sticky mud caked on every inch of our bikes. It's so thick, both the front and rear wheels are completely locked up. Try riding with both brakes on... it's not easy. ;-) We had no choice but to throw our bikes on our back and proceed to hike for a mile or two, straight up hill. Our once 30lbs bike now weigh 50+lbs, along with the insane amount of mud caked everywhere. This sucked pretty bad. Once the rain let up, it was time to pick off as much mud (drying quickly) as possible. Our front and rear derailleurs were so caked, they were pretty much worthless. Not to mention our chains were a long string of mud. Insane I tell ya! When we finally made it to lunch, we were pretty spent although we only had approx 13 miles to camp, all on fairly flat double track. Not bad, although we ran into a nasty head wind which forced our group to take 3-4 min shifts in a draft. We did this for a solid 90 min without stopping. Needless to say, we were pretty wiped by the time we hit camp. Total time biking with rests = 6:42:02.


Day 2 (endurance day) - Beat up from the day before, we hit the trails again mostly on double track. Seems like an easy one, although we hit sand pit after sand pit for almost 33 miles. Some of these pits were so tough to ride through, most people walked. This jaunt was pretty tasking on the patience part, as it just never seemed to end. This particular kind of riding is right up my buddy's alley; just mash on those pedals over and over. I held his back tire as much as possible, even though my heart rate was at the high end of zone 3 the whole time. This about killed me. I can climb/spin for 20 straight miles, navigate and clean obstacles that makes my wife ill, and descend like a mountain lion. The straight mashing is NOT my gig. My buddy could probably do a hundred miles of this crap, so it was in my best interest to use him to get me to lunch. Completely wiped, we finally made it to where the trail hits pavement. This was pretty much down hill to lunch, so we were very much looking forward to this. Only catch was, we had a 20mph+ head wind. We had to pedal our way down hill. This half of the morning sucked equally as bad as the entire Day 1. We took our time refueling at lunch until we hit it again. The next section was a series of nasty climbs with a couple short descents here and there. I was definitely back in the game. The climbs were pretty long and boring though. We actually hopped off the bikes for a while and walked, not only to let the heart rates come down, but mainly because we were downright bored. We did this for about 4 straight hours. So brutal, that the last half of the day started to suck just as bad as the morning. So basically, Day 2 sucked exactly twice as bad as the first. When we got to camp, we were thoroughly wiped! Let the healing process begin for Day 3. Total time biking with rests = 8:30:21.

Day 3 (climbing day) - Almost immediately out of camp, we started climbing. There was a very fun (but short) 5 mile descent in there before the big nasty climb. The climb was 17 miles long and by this point in the ride, it was tough to do anything but throw it all the way down in the granny gear. Fairly consistent grade all the way and surprisingly enough we road the whole thing. There were many false summits on this one, but once we reached the pavement at the top it was down hill to lunch. This pavement section was pretty sweet, as it was by far the steepest grade I have ever ridden. We easily reached speeds of 55mph. My wife will sure to be mad when she reads this. ;-) Anyway, we got down fast! The nice thing is lunch was our goal for the day, as we hop a shuttle from there that takes us to the top of UPS (Upper Porcupine Rim single track). This is our heaven. Porcupine Rim was what we were looking forward to the whole trip. From the spot we were dumped off, it was basically 30 miles of the sweetest down hill/single track that money can buy. I especially loved this shot at Porc Rim, as I cleaned everything but 2 obstacles. Being there are endless "oh shit" moments on this descent, the task not wrecking is a major win. Total time biking with rests = 8:45:10.

Overall, I would label this trip as tough, but also quite an accomplishment. I'm not sure (as of now), that I would do it again. It's like stuffing yourself silly at your favorite buffet and someone asking you if you'd like to go out for pizza afterwards. I'm still quite full at the moment. To pull off a ride like this, you must be in excellent shape and train your butt off. Great technical skills will come in handy if you don't want to sport a bunch of scrapes and bruises each night... plenty of riders did.

My bike is currently undergoing intense surgery right now, as mud and gunk worked it's way into every square millimeter. I'm tearing it down to the smallest nut and bolt to clean and repair it. I'll be back on it soon... Possibly training for the Fire Cracker 50!