Riding as therapy

For any of you that I know closely, you know work has been tough lately.  It's been rough and time has been scarce to ride at all.  I have been lucky to get out one day a week lately and when I do get out it's a squeeze.  I was able to do one Friday night urban ride with a couple buds a couple weeks ago, then on Saturday I was fortunate enough to have Kris watch the kids so I could go on a ride down at the John Muir trails.

I haven't ridden down there for years, I was trying to figure out how long it's been and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's probably been 10 years.

The trails were great.  I got up super early to get on the road in time to ride and then drive back before dinner.  I rode blue loop first, then came back and grabbed the fatbike for a loop on Orange then on Red(Brown?).  After that, I exchanged the fatbike for the scalpel again, headed down the road to the Emma Carlin connector trail and rode that up and back.  There was a race going on at Carlin so I didn't go around those loops, I'll save that for another trip.

It was one of those days where it's humid enough it feels like it could storm at any minute, but never does.  It was wet - sticky, and hot enough for me.  I left the trails pretty tired but mentally refreshed after a couple real ass kicker weeks at work.

What I need to do is keep finding ways to carve out that time to ride as it definitely lets me clear my head up quite a bit.  Short rides help, trail rides help, commuting helps, anything.  What I find is that riding a bike just does that for me.  I just need to find more time to make that work out for me.

Red Earth Classic 2015

So, the last race I did was the Red Earth Classic, up in Negaunee, MI on July 18th.  I had signed up for the "Beast" 32mi race but ended up swapping mid-week the week prior to the 20mi "Loader" race.  Two reasons - one is I haven't trained a ton, and two is my family vacation the week prior meant the family was going to be waiting for me to race.  Instead of doing a race starting at noon that would take 3-4 hours I did one starting at 10 that took <2ish (can't remember my time already).

The race was great, the start was in the same park that I remember being around/near for the Ore2Shore start a couple years ago, and started immediately up a big hill of two-track dirt atv trail.  Not enough roll-out to get the pack separated enough unfortunately but I guess that's how it goes.  Basically, about 50% of the climing in the race came in the first 5 miles on two track that honestly was not too fun.  Then we started alternating between singletrack and doubletrack for the remainder of the race.

My race went well, I was mid-pack as I'd expected but felt pretty good.  I was happy to have gotten out there.  I think the singletrack was fun, a bit tighter and not a ton of flowy sections like I'd hope for but it was mostly OK. 

Wow, I forgot to post a Mt. Borah Epic race report

I'll get back to that a bit later, I have been in a riding lull recently with a good ride about once per week happening.  Some have been able to be a hair longer but mostly they are short one loop type rides.  I've been happy to see my speed coming up but my endurance has obviously suffered from a lack of total time on the bike.

Next race is the Red Earth Classic on July 18th.

So many things to prep and get ready, I need to get to work on the bike, get some rides in, and on top of that the week of the race I'm up in the UP for vacation.  I hope to ride some up there but I will have to see what I can pull off.

Race week!

So while I haven't been riding much the rides I have had have been faster than my historical.  I am geared up for a fun Mt. Borah Epic on Saturday and while I am not certain I'll feel great the whole race (I probably won't) I am really excited to get out and see if I can beat last year's time.

Last year I did the race after a week-long binge in Canada (annual guys fishing trip).  This year for a few reasons I didn't go on that trip.  Even though I havent' trained as much as last year I feel like I may be better off considering how out of sorts I was during that race.

Bike is prepped, tonight I pack to get the family going to Duluth tomorrow.  I'll drive down to Cable and back on Saturday so we can spend the weekend with the family in Duluth.  Should be fun!

Holy smokes, only 2.5 weeks until Mt. Borah Epic!

Time has really gotten away from me, I have not done the training I was hoping to do, it's been a struggle to even get out once a week although I've been maintaining that lately at least. 

I did a ride Sat to/from the camp with 2 laps there.  It felt good and was nearly 40mi total.  Distance is coming easy, I'm feeling good, not crazy fast by any means but I do think I'm faster than I was last year at this time, maybe not able to maintain for long distance like I was but faster anyhow.

I am hoping to get some good rides here in the next couple weeks prior to the race, I know I'm not in peak shape but it will just be fun to get out to the CAMBA system and ride the trails a bit.  I am looking forward to getting back out there.  I am planning on doing the weekend from Duluth, we'll go there Friday then race Sat, then come back Sunday.  I'm tempted to take Monday off so I can ride more in Duluth when I'm there or spend more time with family, we'll see how that goes.

I would say for Grandma's Marathon weekend June 20th when I'm Duluth I'll be for sure bringing the scalpel and hope to ride while I'm there.  It will probably be a zoo on the trails but they are just so damn fun it's hard to skip an opportunity to ride up there.  I should try out Mission Creek as I haven't been there yet.

Finding time to ride and a couple longer ones

Work has been crazy busy lately, we're going through a startup after some construction and those times are always hard.  That's meant two things - riding time is scarce and energy is low, but the NEED for riding is high.

I'm super lucky that Kris understands that, so I've been able to sneak away the last 2 weekends one of the days in the morning for a longer ride.  Two weeks ago I went Sunday morning to the Refo Camp and did 3 laps for a good 30ish miles of riding.  The last of the 3 laps was semi-with the Broken Spoke guys, although they were on lap 1 and I on lap 3 so I only hung with them for about a mile.

This weekend I did a fun ride, rode from the house to Baird Creek (about 10mi) then did a lap, then home.  It was super fun and the miles came pretty easy.  Riding through town on a Saturday morning is pretty fun as it's quiet and there is lots to look at as you ride through the different neighborhoods.  Riding home the town had waken up a bit so I didn't go back on the same busy roads I'd gone on to get there.  The lap at Baird was unremarkable, I just tried to push up the hills but rode easy on the rest, figured that'd give me a semi-interval workout while I was there.  Those trails are really fun, I prefer them to the camp but they're harder to get to so I end up at Camp a bit more often.

A bit of rambling, but the 42t conversion is working well, with exception of the 16t cog that came with it.  That thing doesn't shift nearly as well as the Sram cogs do, I'm going to see about getting a 16t from the shop to swap in there, then we'll be solid.  The 42t seems to function very well, just a bit more driveline noise than I'm used to is all.  I don't want to ever spend all day in that gear but it's nice to have when I need it.  Also, I've been riding the scalpel on singletrack lately with the lockout on, seems like the way to go unless it's very rough, I prefer the tighter handling I get that way.

Forgot to mention, Noah and I rode in between those rides to a school think for his Kindergarten next year. We had a massive crash about a block from home, we were riding in the neighborhood road, then Noah just blindly veered over in front of me.  I did what I could to stop, but hit him and ended up going over my bars in order to not crush him.  I think fortunately I took the brunt of the injuries.

Hot lap, sick, then another lap

Last week Wednesday I finally got the bike out on dirt singletrack.  It felt like it's been just too long!

I took the fatbike as my scalpel needed some love. I went to the Reforestation Camp, it always dries out faster than Baird's and it's a good place to run some baseline laps and get out there.  It helps that it's only 10min from my house vs. 20min for Baird's.

Anyhow, the fatbike has always been and is fun for singletrack and it was fun to get out with the tubeless setup on summer tires on the bike.  I ended up setting my fastest lap time for the green loop that I've done ever.  I was kind of surprised as I didn't think I was really going fast enough to do that.  As I got further into the ride though I knew it was a quicker lap than most I run so I tried to keep the pace up.  It was a 54:3x lap which is good but my goal I think for this year is to get <50min.  I think that's achievable but I need to really focus to do that.  It is good to have a goal.

To get the Scalpel ready, I had to remount tires with new Stan's.  I also took the chance to change out my cassette setup.  Late last year I went to 1x10 with a 32t front ring and a 11-36 in the rear.  I upgraded now so I've got a 42t bailout gear and added a 16t inbetween the 13 and 19 (I think).  The goal there is to extend the cassette range a bit.  After riding the XX1 setup all winter on the fatbike I knew I wanted more range than what I had.

So, went out yesterday for the first ride I've done in a long time on the Scalpel.  It's so different from the fully rigid fatbike and has major advantages in some areas, but at the same time does not have advantages in others.  For these local trails the full suspension is a waste, I can say I think the fastest I'd be is on a hardtail 29er with something like a 80-100mm front fork.  When riding the fatbike I feel the bumps more (they aren't brutal) but any time the trail is rough downhill with turns I feel I give up a lot of speed.  Those are the faster ones on the scalpel but it's hard to beat efficiency of a full rigid setup and the grip of the fatbike is great.

My lap yesterday was only about 25 sec slower than my lap last week.  I was not really trying to be fast at the start of the lap so it was surprising to be in that range.  I for sure am feeling the benefits of riding the fatbike all winter and also the power class.  My legs feel significantly stronger than they did last year.