Beaver Valley

I love Park City. It is awesome. This year marks the third consectutive year that I've made the trip out to Utah for the NORBA National at Deer Valley. Unfortunetly it was just me and Brandon again, Matt wasn't able to make the trip. He better next year though...if he knows what good for him. The main objective for this trip was bumming places to stay. We left with no intentions of paying money for a room to stay in. And guess what, we did it. The first night we slept 10 feet away from the baggage claim in Salt Lake City Airport. We pulled the foam out of our bike boxes, jacked pillows from the airplane and snuggled up for the night. Yeah sure, people starred and little kids were puzzled and asked their parents what were doing, one parent answered their child with, "well they're probably waiting for their airplane", but that's what traveling to races is all about. The next morning we were able to pick up our rental car. By golly was it a beauty. Two guys driving around Park City, Utah in a white PT Cruiser isn't exactly cool, but we raged it nonetheless. We opted for the upgraded insurance which waived us from any damage we caused, so we had our way with the car. Burnouts, redlines, U-turns, and hitting curbs were commited recklessly and carelessly. By the end of the week the car was marked up and scratched inside and out, ran noticably worse than when we got it, shifted extremely hard into second gear and had a dent the size of Texas under the front grill. Thank God for damage waivers.

Besides the ongoing demolition derby of the Cruiser and endless loitering outside Starbucks in out sweet Walmart "rental" chairs, we did a bit of bike riding. The course was the same from years past fast, fun, dusty, and at altitude. The XC race didn't go so well for me after the first 20 min. My start was great, one my best yet. I was able to break the top 20 by the top of the first long climb and well into the singletrack. By the end of the first lap, though, the elevation was starting to take its toll and a retired after the second. I hate to blame a bad race on anything other than myself but I really felt like if the race was at sea level, I would have faired much better. I can't help but think what would happen if I had gotten a start like that at, say, Mt. Snow...

Next up was short track, my personal favorite. I got a pretty poor starting spot towards the back and was dead last after someone in front of me bobbled right at the line. Luckily, from years prior, I knew that the first turn/climb always bottled up nicely so I sat back and waited to find a the best line. It worked perfectly as a passed half the field, literally, in about 100 feet. From there on it was a typical sufferfest, just trying to hold on and pass anybody, anywhere you had a chance. I lasted about 8 minutes. Not too shabby.

Monday was a long ride day for Brandon and I. We started out on the Marathon course from last year and climbed all the way to the top of Flagstaff Mtn. From there, we climbed a little farther along the ridge until we hit snow. It was cool, walking through snow in 90 degree weather on the top of a mountain. We got to ride all the way down mountain on some sweet trails and ran into two giant moose. They were enormous, and ran really funny.

Another sweet trip out west...next up is Snowmass, CO. Hopefully it can live up to the great times in Park City.

Stoopid 50

A few weeks back was the Stoopid 50, the first of the MASS Endurance series. The race was made mostly of the second half of the Wilderness 101 course and it was quite difficult, in fact. Over 80 percent of the loop was singletrack. Huge rocks, soft loamy trails with a little (8,000? ft) of climbing. Matt and I spent the night at Brandon's place in hopes of getting some quality sleep. Instead we stayed up til almost midnight and than rose promptly at 5 am for breakfast. Though we fell far short of the all-important 8 hours of sleep, I had high expectations for the day, being that Brandon and I had pre-rode the course the week prior. The start was somewhat mellow, Brandon actually waited for a full two miles before he attacked like a blithering idiot, forcing the rest of the pack to "throw it in the dog". Once he was out of sight I focused on keeping the rest of the field behind me. Wes and TJ Platt were both looking pretty smooth and it didn't take long to figure out that they would be the two main guys I had to hold off. I stayed pretty steady with both of them until we hit the most annoying part of the race, Sassafrass. All three of us were together on the 20 minute hiking section. At the top I decided to up the pace, I cruised the next 7 or 8 miles and reeled TJ in just before we launched into the second half of Sassafrass. I pinned it up the climb and put a descent gap on TJ by the top. The rest of the race went pretty smoothly, cruised a good pace, bonked pretty bad, and had a picture taken that made the race report on cyclingnews.com.

Brandon came in first somewhere around 4:17, I was 12 minutes behind him, and Wes rounded out the podium only 2 min. later. A side note: I had to pee for the last 30 miles/2.5 hours of the race. So bad that it hurt.

Tour de Tykes

Today was the annual Tour de Tykes in Danville, PA. The past 3 visits to Danville have provided nothing but rain, mud, and lack of fun. It was because of these less than ideal circumstances that the event was unofficially renamed "Tour de Gay". This year however was not consistant: dry trail conditions and high temperatures/humidity.

Warming up I didn't feel up to par. A little slow and heavy and kinda tired. The start went fine, felt strong and was 5th-ish going into the woods. A couple climbs, passes, and mechanicals later I found myself leading this whole shindig. (Brandon and Ray both flatted, Kyle was having some shifting issues it appeared, and then I passed a couple people) I stayed out front for about the next 10 miles and stretched a lead out to almost 3 minutes. On the second half of the course I could feel some cramping coming on so I slammed the rest of my bottle and two gu's to try to thwart them. It didn't really work. They got progressively worse until the bottom of the very last climb when Rob and Wes finally caught me. I was able to ride through them and tried to stay with both of them up the last powerline hike a bike section but I wasn't quite able to. Wes took home the gold, Roberto was second, I rolled through 3rd, and the ever-so-suave Ryan Leech took home 4th. After I finished both legs locked up and I had to ask Ryan to unclip my foot for me because I couldn't move it. I'll pound to that.

It seems like this year's Super Series is already shaping up to be the most competetive and dynamic seasons yet. Everyone's stepped up there game and really brings it on race day. All the races so far have really been packed with action. Lots of back and forth passing, mechanicals, and tough courses have made for stiff and interesting competition. Keep it comin'...

Oh yeah, and the sweet new ride worked perfectly.