Long Long long couple of weeks

so you would think that with as many races have been going on the last couple of weeks I would be a bloggin fool (since I only blog after a race) but in honesty I have been too tired. so here is a quick update.

Deer Valley National
Everything at DV seemed to go well, we lined up as the first group to go off on sunday morning so it was nice to have a lead moto and dustless dh to rip. it was hodge pog field as it always is at nationals Kenny came up and Josh wolfe sandbagged to try and get some stars and stripes glory, the PC ssers showed up and a bunch of other randoms, then the typical fast nationals guys.

so the start went well I purposely held back so as not to to go too far in to the pain cave on the first lil stick climb. Josh and some factory sho air dude went off the front then the trek factory guy (georgia goulds husband I found out later) then me. so then we nt over the top and I chased but the trek guy had a minute on me after the first lap and it stayed that way for most of the race. we had 3 laps so it felt good. Paul clark was the first expert to catch me at the end of the 2nd lap which he then proceeded to get a flat. so then I continued to push hard into the third lap to see if i could close the gap and I knew kenny was hurtin by then so I wanted to put some distance between he and I. I ended up finishing 4th which was fine I guess. If I had finished one more spot higher I would have been stoked because I felt great and strong but made another stupid mistake tactically at the begining and let them get too far out. one interesting thing was that if I had raced in my age group with Ryan I would have placed 3rd only 25 secs behind 2 and a minute behind the leader. so that tells how tough the single speed group really is. I stand by my claim that it is the 2nd most competitive group after the Pro men (maybe 3rd if you include the semi pros) but we were the fastest racers out there in the expert groups.

12hr Endurance
So then a short 5 days later was the 12hr undurance which Ryan and I were racing as a Duo. I haven't done an endurance race in like 8 years, since I last did the 24hrs of moab. so I was a little bit nervouse. I was mostly worried about the heat, it was going to be in the mid 90s up there. but we made sure we were prepared and really focusing on drinking and eating early in the race. My plan was to ride the SS for the first few laps then as I fatigued I was going to race my Rush. I volunteered to be the first guy out so I got to do the run which was really long and uphill. I was second after the run and first by the time we went throught the pits, it turns out that Sly fox is no good at running in his road shoes. from the very start it was Ryan and I's team, Sly fox and Zep, Chris Holley and his wife and the guys from Idaho. from the first lap us 4 walked away from the rest of the field, I knew that it was going to be a drag race for most the day. I backed off on the last lap because I was going into the red stickin with Sly. The hand off went clean Ryan laid down a wicked fast lap and put every other team outa the way and it was just sly's team and us. IT stayed that way for about 6 or 7 laps sly extend ed the lead to about 5 mins. then the guys from Tamarack came charging back we held them off for about 2 laps then Blaney got a flat and they passed us, but all that time we were all relatively close. thats when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Ryan began puking and couldn't put any thing back. I was sup er nauseus and couldn't eat or drink anything between laps. we faded off of the leaders and began our survival mode. I am not going to lie the afternoon hurt really really bad. then things went frombad to worse, ryan completly bonked on his 6th lap and we lost more time so i decided to get on the Rush and go back to back laps so we could stay in the top 3. i made it abou 15 mins ou t on the 13th lap and broke my frame around the bottom bracket, that was it i was officially beat down. so i walked in the next 7 miles watched two more duos pass me, gave most my water to brad pilling because he was worse off then me. i finished right at 7 pm the last lap took me 1 hr and 45 mins. we ended up 5th. congrats to sly and ZEp they through down some blazin laps.
much thanks go out to all that helped us but especially the wives, Heather and Carli, without them out there helping us we would have never made it.

so now I am in rest mode I am probably not going to race Solitude, as much as I would like to woop Ali and Sly around I just don't think it would be good for me physicvally my body needs the Rest.

I will post some pics later, sorry for the novel like posts

DV 1track

Saturday was the DV pedalfest. part of me feels pretty good about my fitness and tactics for this race, but the other part feels kind of a bit let down. I got a good start and held myself back from starting too fast becasue I didn't want to blow up on the little stick climb. it all worked as planned and I came over the top of the LS climb right with Brad and only 5 secs behind Gallager so then the chase was on down the DH. I got a little over aggressive at one point with Brad passing guys on the inside and clipped his wheel going down pretty hard but the adrenalin was pumping so I just rolled throught the corner and didn't lose a spot. by the end of the first DH I had passed Brad and he and I were right on Gallager again starting up the Deer Crest climb but at that point I was pretty blown so Brad passed me again, then I got hit with a blast from the past Todd Henneman from Jan's passed me on his singlespeed and he was leading another group of 4 or 5 SSers coming hard.

At that point I think I went into survivor mode because My focus shifted from going after galleger to now not getting passed by this group of SSers that were hard charging at me, the group included the 69er guy, Stephen Wasmund, the pedros guy, and KK Holiday. I knew if I could get to the DH ahead of those guys I could make some time on all of them except probably holiday. Thats pretty much what happened KK caught me on the last decent into the finish area but then I quickly caught him on the climb. going up Little stick stephen and the 69er guy were charging hard at me again so Ihad to go deep into the pain cave and put some distance on them at the top of the climb. I put a little more off of the decent but by the Deer Crest climb but they werre right on me again. we were climbing up the single track I was leading 69er guy and Steve. 69er guy kept asking to pass like Iwas a lapper or something, I finally told him if he was going to take me he had to put some effort into it because I wasn't just gong to pull over. after i said that he tried to pass me and I closed the door on him. sometimes it is good to have a little experience


I held the lead over those two all the way to the dh, then steve and I opened a gap and ripped the DH, (steves DH skills are greatly improving,maybe its those sexy big wheels) I knew the whole time he was setting me up for a spint finish. when we hit the pavement I had to zig around a lapper and we almost all went down but it came down to Stuart Mcgrady bike thrust at the line to get him, so I got 4th by less than an inch.

I am actually more happy with my last lap because a year ago i wouldn't have had the confidence to hold those guys off for a lap, i would have just let them get me. so i guess thats good. Nationals is next week we do 3 laps on that course so we will see how it goes, now its time for some serious resting this week...

chasin gears

last night I went up with Ryan and Kday to pre ride the DV course. Ryan and I were late because we stopped to see the Beav and his new kid so we missed the jans Ride, sorry paul and holiday we will have to pop wheelies another day. so we did a lap of the course and we did it faster than I would have liked but it was good, when we all ride togethor it always ends up being a mexican drag race at some point or another. the course was good but kinda dusty, but i think I have the right gearing 35x22 if anyone wants to know. once we finished a lap we debated doing another one but instead we rallied out to explore some good PC 1 track. I wish I could tell you where we went but I have no idea all I know is that we ended up near the top of guardsmen and got into some crazy trails made of sticks and logs and stuff. which would have been great except I was on a 29er single speed which doesn't really lend itself to freeriding. so I am sticking to the comment that only gay guys ride wood. ( no offense to any one out there who is into wood or dudes, thats just one mans oppinion). the worse part is that we hit those super technical trails at likee 9 pm which is pretty dang dark so that added an element of excitement.

this is what I saw mostly last night

It doesn't matter where we ride but when i ride with ryan and Kev it always turns into an epic but that is the fun of it. all in all I think I held my own with those 2, they dropped me a few times but other than that I was happy. you guys up in pro should watch out though because Kday is getting faster.

gettin beat

so last weekend was the sundace race, there were a whole new crop of singlespeeders there, imagine if we could get the SLC 1speeders togethor with the UC 1speeders we would have a killer group, but maybe thats too much to ask. any way there was another good group of racers there plus all the usuals( kenny, Brad, Forrest ....), I like this course it has a good dh plus a ton of fun 1 track.

so at the start I played a little tactical move that I learned from last years race, I have learned that if you let kenny and brad get away early they will work togethor and you will never see them again (example Draper race). so I purposely started very hot up the pavement and put a gap on the group but my purpose was really to get up into the experts in front of us because if I could get up into those guys and have few in between myself and brad and kenny it would jam everyone up on the single track and it keep kenny close. so i did just that and got 2 or 3 experts between me and the rest of the field then I made a couple of bigger passes in the single track so the end result was a big group of us wheel to wheel in the single track through most of the first lap or at least until the DH.

So once Kenny got passed me on the last climb then I battled with brad a bit and passed him back on the DH and held off until the second lap where he layed the hurt on me, I tried to real him in but I never could get within a minute or so. on the final last climb up the pavemnt I came out of the one track and kept an eye to see if any other SSers were close and I didn't see any so I just kept putting tempo in up the hill until the last 100 meters I could hear someone coming and it was the dude on the 69er charging hard trying to steal a position from me so I got on it hard and edged him out by a bike length, he seemed kinda pissed cuz he threw down his bike at the finish line. in reality if i had delayed 1 more second he would have got me. I guess I gotta pay better attention cuz there are some fast kids racing these days.