Is Winter Over Yet?

I seem to be in a bit of a cycling funk.  It has snowed here a lot.  And it is darn cold too.  Real winter this year.  Yeah, playing around on the fatbike was loads of fun, but it does get old eventually.  And the snow transforms from fluffy good stuff to icy nasty stuff within a few days.  I think I'm ready for winter to be over.

The roads have dried up a bit in the last two days so I've been out on fatbike road rides and even got the cross bike out today.  On Tuesday's fatbike ride, I discovered a bridge completely missing on Stone Quarry Rd.  I had to tip toe my way across deep icy water on slippery rocks to keep my feet dry.   The county engineer makes it sound like it could be 6months or more before the bridge is back again.

Today was a real grind.  I did 53 miles but most of it was painful.  My legs just felt dead today and to boot there was an icy wind of about 10mph for the last half of the ride.  I just couldn't seem to power in to it and so was resigned to two hours of torturous 13 mph average, pushing into the nasty headwind.  Wind blowing over snow and ice covered fields, it feels like standing in front of a huge ice box with a high powered blower aimed right at you for four straight hours.

I seem to alternate really good rides when I am sure I'm ready to go pro with really awful rides where I can barely get the bike to move forward.   Maybe I'm a bit overtrained (I'm doing regular trainer intervals and weight lifting on in between days).   Maybe I'm a bit sick of winter and cold headwinds.

I think I'm skipping Southern Cross.  I just don't want to waste a 3 day weekend, drive 9 hours each way, spend $500, etc.

The highlight of today's ride was finding this little school house perched on a cove of Hoover Reservoir.  I've been in this area many dozens of times but have always missed this road segment.  Glad I found it today, it was just beautiful.  

Winter Is Here

Again, my blog entries seem to be few and far between.

I had sketched a plan and secured spousal approval to ride the C&O/GAP trail from Washington DC to Pittsburgh after Christmas.  My dad was to drive me down to DC from State College on Dec 27.  I would ride the 27th, 28th, 29th and possibly the 30th to finish in Pittsburgh and take a Greyhound to Zanesville.  Well, mother nature intervened.  We've had 3 major snow storms and a few minor ones.  Long story short, 8" of fresh snow on half of the trail made things impassable even for the snow bike.  So trip postponed for now.

Speaking of Christmas, I did very well for cycling gifts.  Bar Mitts for both the mountain bike and cross bike, and a new air compressor to mount tubeless tires.    Laura got some Wolvhammer boots and I must admit to being a bit jealous.  They seem way nicer than my Lakes.  

I've had a very good two months of training, logging one of my highest mileage months in Nov and did well in Dec too until the snow hit.  I even got a 96 miler in on the bike trail from Mount Vernon through Amish country to Fredricksberg and back.   After losing some fitness from taking most of Sept and Oct off, I feel very fit right now.  I am concentrating on weight lifting and intervals to build speed and strength -- my two major weaknesses.  

This past two weeks I've been forced to enjoy major snow rides, many with John.  It is fun but produces low mileage.  It is good for bike handling as we've been sliding all over the place on those fat bikes.   Every two to three days we've had another 2" to 8" of new snow, it just won't stop coming.   And now the cold is setting in so it will stick around plenty long.  I think we've already tripled the total from last year and winter has hardly begun.  Last year's mild winter won't be happening this year.

I've got my race schedule lined up for next year.  My A races are: Cohutta 100, Mohican 100, Lumberjack 100, Wilderness 100 and probably Shenandoah Mountain 100.   I may also do Southern Cross if John decides to go.  And I've had my eye on this race in the Black Hills called the Tatanka 100; I may add that too.   I feel like this is the year to commit to being fit and going after some good races.  I don't have many years left of being a spring chicken! :)  I would like to shave at least an hour off my race times from last year; I think that is realistic given my fitness level right now and the time I have available.

Boy would I like to add a Salsa Warbird Ti to my stable.  Freeze Thaw has one in my size and it is beautiful.  But I don't see the funds becoming available unless I win the Dirt Rag Lit contest ... still waiting to hear about that long shot.   I would be willing to sell my Ti Grove Innovations and my current cross bike, but I'll still be well short.  It is also possible to unload the road bike ( I only rode it 3 times last year ) but I would need to know that would bridge the funds gap.

It looks like Todd and John and I will go to see the World Championship Cyclocross race in Louisville on Feb 3.   That should be fun!  

Getting Back in Gear

Again, a single entry to catch up on a bunch of things.

Half Marathon

I had taken about a month off from serious cycling to get ready and run the Columbus Half Marathon.  See my previous post about the actual race day activities and results.  The next two weeks sucked as I caught a cold for the first week and then it rained the entire second week.  So I had two weeks without much exercise at all, gained a few pounds. 

Essay Contest

 On Oct 30th I saw that there was an essay contest in Dirt Rag.  The due date was Nov 1.  So I hastily scrapped together an essay about riding the whole of the GAP and C&O trail in one day/night.  340 miles in 30 hours.  It is a ride I very much want to do, but at this point it will have to be a fictional essay.  I have been thinking for a year about writing a murder mystery novel that features this area, so I brought out some of those ideas for the essay.  I hope I win ... a Pivot Mach 5.7 is first prize.   Trick or Treat night was actually on Halloween this year.  We went out for a cold hour ... in the rain! 

Riding Again

I was finally able to get out a ride again after 7 straight days of blustery, cold rain.  That hurricane Sandy did a number on us with precip but nothing like the NY/NJ coast.  So I can't complain too much.  I got out on Thursday evening for a short 30 mile ride.  Then all day Friday for a long 68 mile ride to Columbus (see below).  Today (Sunday) I joined Gorrilla and a group of five others for a solid gravel ride.  We started in  Glenford and did 43 miles with 4500 feet vertical.  It was beautiful roads, several I've been on before but some new stuff too.  The whole route was up and down, a real climbing sufferfest.  Sada was having a bad day and so it was fun being in front of him most of the day; I know he can kick my ass without problem on a regular day.  I was surprised that I was able to hang in with the group and not be the one at the rear that everyone waits for.  I was strong right through the last climb!  I did almost lose it on one gravel corner; got the rear going sideways and managed to save it.  John said it looked impressive, I said it wasn't intentional.  Guys were on very different bikes.  Regular cross bikes (as in $15k bikes that weigh nothing), a single speed steel rig and even a 29er hardtail. 

Bikes

On Friday I rode in to Paradise Garage to test ride a couple of bikes.  Mostly the new Salsa Warbird.  I got there to discover it was the Aluminum version, not the Ti as I had been told.  They had it set up way too high, more like a geriatric hybrid than a gravel RACING bike.   So it was very hard to get a feel for the bike since the set up was so wrong.  But Salsa did design this bike with a tall head tube so it does sit up a bit more anyway.  The Al was very stiff, probably too much.  I really need to try the Ti.  I also got on a Foundry carbon Auger.  It was very sweet and soaked up the bumps with aplomb.  I thought it outshone the Salsa even though I thought I would like that bike better.  The Auger has these sexy carbon seat stays.  It is super light.  I really like John's Ti Warbird so I will wait to try one at Freeze Thaw.  Either way, I don't have the $4k for a new warbird so I'll have to win the essay contest or wait a while. 

Fall Ramblings

This is a catch-up entry on a couple of weeks.   In late September was "take your kid mountain biking day".  There was a big event organized at Alum Creek.  Unfortunately it had rained hard the night before prompting the cancellation of the said event.  Eli and I went anyway and we brought along John Sada and his ten year-old son Anthony.  John rides tons but he is very new to mtn biking.  Anthony rides quite a bit for a 10 year old but is also new to mtn biking.  We set off for a lap on P2 and it was immediately loads of fun watching these two newbies navigate the trail for the first time.  Log overs, skinnies, and the wet roots all through them for a loop.  But to their credit they wanted to ride the stuff over and over again, each time being willing to learn the techniques and give them an honest try.   We did our first lap in about an hour.  So much fun was had that everyone wanted to do lap 2.  So we set off again.  This time John and Anthony took off in race mode.  Eli and I had a good lap too, but were fed humble pie back at the car by the two Sadas.

Last week I did a cross ride up to Gambier.  It was a bit chilly, but the major problem was the wind.  I caught steady winds of 20mph with gusts up to 30 or so.  They were coming out of the south so I had a nice ride up, but a nightmare coming back home.  I really haven't done any long rides in the latter half of the summer, so this was doubly painful.   I think I averaged about 10 mph coming home.

During the summer olympics I got inspired watching the African lope effortlessly along in the distance running events.  I still fondly remember those days.  So I signed up for the Columbus Half Marathon.  I really haven't run hardly at all this whole year.  So I did about a week of easy running, then I spread 5 real workouts over two weeks: 2 long runs of 9 and 11 miles, 1 tempo run of 5 miles and 2 track workouts (quarters and halves).   Then I got sick in the week leading up to the race (see above nightmare windy ride as the cause).   I still had sniffles this morning for the start of the race as this cold was still lingering a bit.   To be honest, I wasn't sure I could do 6:30 pace, and anything faster seemed out of reach.  

I started at 7:30am this morning in the "A" corral about 10 people deep.  I did a 6:36 mile to open things up and it felt pretty darn good.  So I picked it up a bit and logged 6:15ish for the next few miles.  Muscle memory was kicking in good and things were going smoothly.  I was working my way through the field.  By mile 8 I accelerated a bit more and started hitting some miles in the 6:10 to 6:00 variety.   This was simply lovely.  Then I started to tighten a bit (lack of training and that it was 37 deg).  I help 6:15 on the last 3 miles but it was very difficult to keep the legs fresh.  I crossed the line in 1:21:11 and I'm very happy with that.  Far from my 1:12 PR but what can I expect with only 5 serious training runs all year?  

It is funny how I can train pretty regularly for 3 years in mtn bike racing and struggle to crack the top 25%.  Then I basically fall out of bed without hardly any training and run 6:12 pace for a half marathon -- finishing in the top 1/2 of a percent.   I have a runner's body -- low on power but light and very efficient.  

Fatbike Adventure in Hocking Hills

It is funny, but about this time each year I get the hankering for a fatbike adventure.  It isn't anything necessarily planned, but maybe coming off the high volume racing season my body and mind are ready for a different kind of riding and I naturally gravitate towards the fatbike and its relaxed, go anywhere, mentality.


Fatbike Adventure Ride Following the Buckeye Trail from Matt Kretchmar on Vimeo.

This year I made a trip south of the Hocking Hills region to follow segments of the Buckeye Trail that were rideable.   It had rained heavily the day before so the going was kind of wet and muddy in places; glad I brought the Mukluk.   I logged four hours of riding time with about 40 miles of exploration.  A fun day indeed.

My sister has caught the fatbike bug too.  She has a 2013 Pugsley on order through her local shop.  I've been sending her links to videos, ride reports and photos to torment her while her bike still hasn't yet arrived.

 

SM100 Race Report

Well ... it rained a lot, I crashed a few times, and I had to pull out.   There comes a time when a person has to measure up to the amount of suffering they are willing to endure, and I hit my limit in this race.  I'd like to think I can endure significantly more suffering than the average American (afterall I sign up for these 100 mile mtn bike races and I have a long history of elite marathon running), but there were definitely more people out there willing to suffer more than me. 

The race started off reasonably well.  I set off on a medium/hard race pace and climbed through the first hill without too much incident.   The air was very humid (100%) with moderate temps around 70 .. still I was sweating heavily and drinking a lot too.  About an hour in to the race two things happened.  First it started to rain, just moderate rain, but still significant rain that was wetting down the course.   I also managed to catch up to Vicki Barclay who had an early flat and was well back in the field.  We climbed and pushed the "Climb 2" hike-a-bike together and I stayed on her wheel during the fantastic descent.   I was pushing it a bit hard but this was part of my strategy today ... to go harder from the start.  

I paced her on the flatish road section and then pulled away going in to climb three.  I stopped at Aid 2 about a minute longer than her so set off with the goal of catching her on the third and longest (so far) climb.  It was a grueling affair made much worse by the thick mud covering most all of the climb.  Somewhere between a slog and a slippery mess is the best description.  Still I managed to reel her in and stay on her wheel through the top.   The descent down the other side was more technical.  Not bad, but rocky in places.   Vicki was rocking it and I was pushing myself just a little too far beyond my comfort zone.  Keep in mind that Vicki and I both are passing people on the descent, so it is not like I'm a slow wuss or something.  Its just that Vicki is friggin awesome.    I twisted my front wheel in a rock garden and went down for the first time.  No big injury or anything so I picked up my bike and immediately set off even faster to try to catch Vicki's wheel.   This was my big mistake.  About 5 minutes later I went down again, much harder this time and busted up my knee pretty good.  I had a nice blood flow and some heavy bruising.  But more importantly, I was shaken and lost my trail mojo.  I backed off the "follow Vicki" strategy and just set off at a mental recovery pace.   Physically I felt good to go, but I was not in the "flow" anymore. 

Things were good until the fourth climb.  This was supposed to be a smaller affair but it proved to be my undoing.   It was rather technical but the real problem was the pouring rain.  Severe thunderstorms had moved in and had been dumping copious amounts of water on everything; we rode in these conditions for over two hours.   The trail became a slick mess and now my confidence was really shot.  The trail was cut on the side of a 45 degree rocky slope and was only about 12" wide.  I got crossed up in a slippery rock garden and fell ... the wrong way.  I tumbled off the side of the mountain and rolled about 3 times before I came to a final rest in a thicket of thorns.  My knee was banged up again as well as my thumb, my hip and both elbows.  It is amazing I didn't get hurt worse.  It took me 10 minutes to untangle myself and scrambled with the bike up the steep slope to the trail.   Then I walked ... a lot.  My knee was hurt and I wasn't eager to get back on the bike in these conditions.  I was mentally done.

I must admit, I HATE MOUNTAIN BIKING IN THE TORRENTIAL RAIN.  I can ride in the rain no problem, but not technical rock gardens and precariously narrow trails.  I can't do it.  Other people can as lots of people seemed to be busting it down the slippery hill no problem.   I was done.  I walked much of the single track descent and then rode the "trail" back to Aid 4.  The 4 miles of trail in to Aid 4 were more like a stream than a trail.   It was all water everywhere and I had no idea if there was a mudhole or a rock in the middle of it. 

I got in to Aid 4 and then made the decision to bail.  I was hypothermic, it was pouring rain hard.  15 miles of easy road cruising and I was back at my car.  Showered and left.  The whole place was a bloody mud pit and I was ready to get out of there.  Drove 6.5 hours back to Ohio, showered again and crawled in to bed. 

This course was more technical than I had thought.  I think it is harder overall than W101.  I can certain ride this course and probably do well in it, when it is dry.  I probably could have even toughened it out in the miserable mud conditions if not for the two bad falls.  I was just pushing it too hard, too far beyond my ability and I paid the price.    I don't think I would set off on another 100 mile mountain bike race if the forecast called for rain.  I did four of them this year: Cohutta was lovely; W101 rained a bit at the start and then hard at the end; Hampshire was a wet course from recent rains and was technical, muddy and slippery in lots of places; and the Huricane Isaac misery of SM100.  For a year that was marked by extreme drought all summer, I didn't have great luck with my races.  

Now I just want to recover physically and recover my desire to ride a bike again.   Maybe some rail trail exploration is in order this fall.   And maybe some single track riding in DRY conditions.

Hampshire 100 Race Report

The Hampshire 100 was yesterday and a great race it was.  It is amazing that each NUE course can have such a different personality, and this one was certainly that.  The first 20 miles were relatively flat and fast as advertised, then the next 40 miles were frenetic.  It seemed like we were never riding anything more than a few minutes -- a field crossing, single track in the woods, out on a paved road, turn on a side road, now it turns to dirt, now it becomes a jeep trail, now we are back on single track, then through someone's back yard.  It never settled into any rhythm.  There were no big epic climbs but tons and tons of small punchy ones, and most of them seemed to be about 20% grade on loose sandy, babyhead rock surface.   Lots of hike a bike.  Lots of bog holes with thick gooey mud.  

I can't believe how many people's properties we rode through.  I know what a headache it is to get permission from a small handful of property owners for some of these races.  That they could get 80 different people to say "yes, I'll be happy to have 300 psycho bike riders come through my yard" just blows me away.  There must be a real spirit here of sharing access to old right-a-ways and such ... much like England's famous lanes.   

The single track must not get much play there.  It all looked immature.  Clearly some of it was just cut the week before (gee, I think I'll make a 50 yard connector trail through here).  Some of it seemed very new until you hit a bridge that's been there for more than a decade.  On parts of the course we looped twice, the single track was nicely dug in on the second loop.   A lot of these trails are short bits and pieces; no epic 15 miles of continuous, flowly single track to be found.  It was all hard earned grunting and roots and rocks and rough going. 

We started in waves at 6:45 and I went off in the men's open, which was first.  Given that my strategy is to start very slowly, I wasn't real happy about that as I was going to get intercepted by the fast guys in subsequent waves.  Fortunately the first 20 miles of the course were very open and it was easy to allow everyone to self sort.  We did a loop around the camp ground then out to a gravel road.  The first 3 miles were all wide, fast gravel and downhill to boot.  A narrow bridge crossing backed things up for just a moment.  Then lots of gravel rail trail.   We hit the infamous section of riding along the rail bed.  Sure enough, a guy 4 spots in front of me clipped a pedal on a rail tie and flipped up and off into the woods.  Unfortunately his bike stayed on the trail so we all had to dismount and walk around. 

Then more rail trail, dirt roads.  Some climbing helped break things up a bit and then we climbed up the backside of Crotched Mountain Ski resort.  We did some single track through the woods to come down the front side.   Then a very long section of rail trail then went for many miles.   The last bit of it paralleled an old airstrip and was full of deep sand.  Slogfest!

Then we hit the two big climbs: the wall and the power line.  Both were hike a bikes.  The wall started out nicely but then got too loose and too many babyheads to be worth riding.  But this was the first of much hike a bike -- most all of it you could probably clean if you wanted to, but the effort needed to climb it wasn't worth it, better to walk and conserve your matches.   This was all at 25 miles and I was beginning to think this course was going to be really hard.  I had no idea.

The next 20 miles was very rough.  We hit this long section of logging path that was very crude and difficult to ride.  Lots of bogs and water crossings and slippery roots including one section where I carried my bike above my head through waste deep pond crossing.   I was off and pushing the bike lots.  I gotta say this was the dark section of the race and I was worried about having the chops to actually finish in a reasonable time.  The last 10 miles had some nicer single track and I managed to get back to the park in about 6:30 ride time for the first 63 miles. 

I then realized that I wasn't in that bad of a position.  I had beaten most of the 100k riders back for loop 1 and I also knew that I had 20 good fast miles to get back in the groove.  I think the constant struggle in the muddy single track had taken more of a mental toll than a physical one.   I replenished my food supplies and set off on loop 2.

My goal was to pick up 10 places in the last 36 miles.  That was pretty conservative but I didn't think there were that many riders in the 100 miler.   I got my first five in the 15 miles of rail trail; they weren't coming back at me that fast.  We finally hit the cutover section and I was starting to feel good again.  I was climbing well and picking up some slower riders.  I got to 10 and then let one get past me from behind.   We rejoined loop 1 and I started railing it.  Riders were coming back to me in waves and I even reeled in the guy who went by me before.   In the last 10 miles I kicked it up another notch and was humming way faster than I had been through here previously.  I got up to 32 riders I caught and just 1 that got by me and I think stayed out. 

I crossed the line in 9:59 of ride time and something like 10:24 on the clock.  It was a very good success and I can't believe how good I felt at the end.   I had even more kick than I had at W101 and didn't feel as wasted as I did with that effort.   I really think my conditioning is coming along! 

A short two weeks of rest before I head down to SM100.