Early morning thanksgiving ride.   Gonna be a great weekend of trail riding.

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Cold

Katie and I went out to ride today. It was ridiculously cold. My hands were frozen in no time. I guess its time to get out the winter riding gear. Yesterday was hot and today was freezing, only in Kansas.

Back in 1992 we went on a trip to Vail and I took my new Cannondale F1000.  That bike was pretty awesome for its time.  It would still be considered light by todays standards.  Must have been the sweet headshok.  I sold it a few years ago to a collector of Cannondales for almost what I paid for it 15 years earlier.  Harleys dont hold their value that well.  Cannondale was pretty advanced with the system integration back then.  It had a Cannondale fork, cranks, brakes, stem, bars, etc...  I think im going to give bar ends a try again this year.

Middle of November and the trails are perfect, I'm wearing shorts and sweating, and I seem to be the only one out here.  How could this be?  But I know it's awesome.

The Log

Its a 3" binder that has a record of essentially every day I have pedaled my bike since 2007.  5 years of riding almost everyday.  There is a lot of information in there.  I dont like keeping track of my riding but I do it anyways.  The great thing about it is that I can look back on my best races or periods of racing and see what I did to go faster.  Doesnt mean I can recreate it, but I can at least try to.  I have started looking into what I want to do next year for races and therefore have started looking at my past training to see if I can make it work.  I dont think someone who works full time can successfully stay fast enough for the entire mtb season without getting completely exhausted so its better to figure out what time of year its most important to be your fastest and build backwards from that.  My problem is that I seem to always be at my best the same time of the year no matter when I start training.  This year I felt like I was out of shape way too late into the year and only moved my main peak a few weeks back and it hit when there wasnt a lot going on.  So its back to the old plan and the idea is to find races that land in my peak rather than adjust my peak for races.  Makes sense to me.  We shall see, but first...more days in the log with no pedaling.

 

Sun Valley Nationals Course

Better late than never. No bike riding means extra time for this sort of stuff.

They say it's called riding skinnies.  I dunno.  But it's funny that it seems hard even though it's as wide as singletrack.  

Berryman

So after I crashed at Chequamegon and was hurting pretty bad I took a complete week off because I had to.  After that I dont think I did a single "training" ride leading up to Berryman.  I rode my bike in the woods plenty, lots of long 4 hour trips around lake Clinton and the like.  I knew going down to Berryman was going to be a good challenge and I felt pretty out of shape but I figured it would be pretty fun no matter what. 

Got down there Friday night and headed out for some preriding.  Felt absolutely awesome, one of those rides when you wish the race was going on.  Saw the Ethos crew, got some recommendations on terrible accomodations in Steeleville and headed to sleep basically.

Three miles of gravel or so and the race entered singletrack.  I think I was about the 5th person into the woods.  It didnt take too long and I had snuck up to 3rd and Schottler was in sight so I figured I was in fine position for 4 hours of racing.  Then the trail split and I thought the BigShark jersey had gone left, he hadnt.  I led Stolte and a few others a few hundred yards up the wrong trail before someone started yelling at us and we had ot cut through the woods.  Schottler and Tilford were gone and we got back in line around 10th place probably.  Fast forward a few hours....Im cruising down a long fireroad descent.  Ive been going down for proably 5 minutes when I start to notice the trail getting worse and worse.  Im about to stop when I see Bill Stolte emerge from the woods and tell me we have gone the wrong way.  Basically, the race is over for us.  We walk back up the hill for probably 5 minutes and there is a pack of 5-6 more coming down.  We stop them and get on our bikes to pedal back up.  By the top there are 20 of us and we have wasted about 15 minutes.

I start pedaling and am feeling pretty fresh and dont really care how the race ends up.  I start picking off guys at a nice clip and I figure Im well into the top 10 again.  Final gravel slog back to the finish, I miss a right turn that should take me to the end and I end up in the parking lot instead.  I cruise around the back of the building, see the finish line and go through it, but a bunch of guys have already passed through that i had gotten by so I tell the lady not to worry about my place.  Free beer and bbq was more important.

Normally I would be pretty mad about the crappy course marking.  Getting off course 3 times is ridiculous.  Its partly my fault that I dont pay much attention to the arrows and what not.  Im used to racing on short loops that have tape and arrows all over the place so its impossible to get off course.  Plus im typically pretty busy dealing with pedaling, shifting, braking, locking out shocks, etc.  On top of that, during these longer races I usually dont pay much attention to anything but cadence or Ill find myself thinking about all sorts of stuff and slow way down.

I cant wait for next year.  Im gonna be back with some motivation.  Its the off season now.... If someone wants a place in the Iceman Cometh, I dont think Im going to make the trip.