Friday, August 27, 2010

Lummis


Wednesday, Jason Lummis of the Bell's Beer MTB team was hit by a driver who never stopped. He is currently in the ICU at Michigan. Keep him and his family in your thoughts.

The police are looking for a FORD F250, F-350, or EXCURSION with a BROKEN PASSENGER SIDE MIRROR. PLEASE BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Especially in the DEXTER-PINCKNEY AREA. Anyone with information about the crash or the driver of the vehicle that stuck Lummis should call the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department tip line at 734-973-7711.

Updates on his condition will be posted on the Bell's MTB Team facebook page

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Bangtail Blast, Smashing Glass, and a drink with Neptune

This past Saturday was a really good day.

It started with a MTB ride with some GAS/Intrinsik Architecture guys on the Bangtail Divide Trail No. 504. This is the trail that I will be hosting the MSU race on next month. Because of this, I have ridden a lot of the trail at different times for route planning, but Saturday was the first time I got to ride the whole thing this year- and it was just as much fun as I remember it. The beginning and the end of this trail are about 7 miles apart from each other on paved road, so unless you have a shuttle car, you have to ride a little on the road, and we started on this part on Saturday. The MTB ride starts up the Stone Creek switchbacks, which makes for about a 45-50 minute pure climb. Most of the rest of the ride is along the ridge, and we had a tailwind for this section, so it was very fast. The ride ends with about a 20 minute pure downhill that is so much fun. Riding the trail got me very excited for the race next month- it is going to be epic. Below is an elevation profile for the course. The whole ride, including the road portion, took us 3 hours and 1 minute. The race for the A's is probably going to be about 2 hours.

After the ride, I had lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza with Rich and Lizzie, who were stopping through Bozeman on their road trip across the country. They actually spent a good amount of time in Canada and now they are (roughly) on their way back to Ann Arbor.

Then came time for a job that my friends and I had not been looking forward to for a long time. Bozeman does not recycle glass, and the nearest place to recycle it is in Livingston, a town about 30 minutes away (they don't actually recycle it either, they crush it and reuse it in roads and other projects). So we filled up the bed of my truck with all the glass we had been saving for the past few months and started driving.
None of us really knew what to expect, but I think we were thinking the recycling center was just going to have a big dumpster for all the glass. It turns out it was an area of pavement blocked off by cement road barriers (stacked two high and probably 3 long). It looked like most people simply backed into the area and brushed all the glass off their truck, which we were about to do as well. Then Tyson threw one of the bottles into the back of the pit and it shattered, and we realized how much fun this task was going to be. We threw each piece of glass in one by one (except when we wanted to try doubling or tripling up). At one point another guy came and dropped off his glass rather gently and gave us a weird look. We got especially excited with bottles such as Pendelton, which is really thick glass. I am pretty excited for when we get to return our glass again. The only disappointing part was thinking that all this glass probably could have been worth about $150 in Michigan.

On the way out of Livingston, Brad spotted a hole in the wall on a side alley called Neptune's Brewery. I had never heard of it, and it sounded excited so I turned around and we checked it out. It turned out being the best beer I have had in Montana. They had 11 beers on tap, and all the ones that I tasted were absolutely amazing. They also sold one of the coolest growlers I have ever seen, so naturally, I had to get one of those and fill it up. I filled it with an amazing Chimay. I wish I had a picture of the growler to show, but maybe I will post one soon just to show it off because it is so cool.

The day ended with some grilling over at 422 N. Fourth and a bonfire. Oh yeah, did I mention I had originally planned on going into work for about 10 hours after my bike ride. I am glad I got distracted.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Lone Peak Revenge XC

It was a cold, rainy, October day...in August. I woke up in Bozeman and it was raining and 40 degrees F outside, but weather.com had promised that there would not be any rain in Big Sky. As Trevor, Lydia, Christine, and I were driving down, this turned out to be partially true, and stayed partially true all the way through the race. There was a good amount of sun, but it also was drizzling, depending on which side of the mountain you were on.

It actually turned out to be a perfect temperature for a bike race. I had to wear knee and arm warmers while warming up, but during the race, it was not too hot, and everyone raced in shorts and a jersey. Minus a bunch of mud, the conditions were perfect (and actually the mud made it kind of fun- the downhill was very reminiscent of riding out east).

As for the race, it started with me getting the hole shot, but I am pretty sure that is just because nobody else wanted it. I soon got passed by three of the top four, but then I had a pretty good gap on everyone else behind me. Then another couple miles into the first lap, Louis and Lydia passed me. Louis decided the best place to pass me was through a mud puddle- he tried to bunny hop it, but ended up landing right in it and making about a 5 foot wake, that splashed me entirely. With the exception of a little leapfrogging on the second lap, I maintained 5th place in the Men's class for the entire race (6th overall since Lydia beat me- Lydia is competing at the World Cup and at World Championships in the next few weeks, so I am ok with it).

I felt so much better than I expected to feel, since all week my legs were still sore from the hike up to Granite. And a couple parts of the course were redone since last year to make it so much more fun that it was last year. This year I was able to stay in the middle ring the whole race (as opposed to last year, when I spent a decent amount of time walking because some of the sections were so steep).

Overall, it was a very fun race. I have not felt this good and have not had as much fun during a race since Iceman last November. I hope that this is a sign that I am returning to form (faster than expected) and that I can keep improving. My knee was bugging me a little on the last lap, but I am happy about that because it has been hurting a lot since the hike, because all the boulder hopping just destroyed it last week.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Granite Peak

As promised, here is a post about Al's, Andrew's, Brad's and my trip up to the highest point in Montana.

At one point during the trip, we figured out that apparently this was my idea. I think it is one of my not as sane ideas in my life. Overall, the hike was ok, but the 7 hours hiking over boulders the second day really left a bad taste for all of us.

The hike started out with a nice gradual climb up to Mystic Lake, shown below.

Then after the lake, we began a pretty steep climb on a trail that had 28 switchbacks. On this section of trail, we gained about 2000 feet of elevation to get us up near the Froze-to-Death Plateau. Below is a picture of what most of our hiking looked like once we got onto the plateau. At this point, there ceases to be an actual trail (you just walk in the general direction of the Peak). It is roughly marked my cairns (rocks piled on each other). The only problem is, most of the time, the fog (or I should say cloud, since we were actually up in the clouds) was so dense that we had no idea where the cairns were, thus our hike across the plateau took a lot longer than planned.
Eventually we got to a point where the sun was starting to go down and we needed to set up camp. So we tried to find the smoothest spots possible, which involved moving a lot of rocks (and in the end just sleeping around the rocks underneath the tent). Before we went to sleep, the clouds around us cleared for a little bit, and we were able to see some peaks across the way sticking out of the clouds. So, we slept above the clouds for the night.
Here is a picture from our campsite the next morning. Luckily, our second day was already turning out to be much nicer (at least in the beginning).
So we kept hiking across the plateau, and along the way ran into a lot of goats. The goats came very close to us, as the one the picture below is only about 3 feet away from me. They also kept us up all night digging at the rocks for some reason right outside of out tents. I was tempted to spray one with bear spray because he would not go away.
Then was time for climbing the actual peak. Most of this time, I was more scared than I have ever been. I was more scared on this climb than I was when I was climbing over Panda, the bull. The first major scary part was what is called the snow bridge. It is a section of snow over a saddle that is about 20 feet long and only about 3 feet wide. And the snow drops off right away, so falling would results in about a 1000 foot slide to death. I went across basically scooting on my butt.
Then, after the snow bridge, the entire rest of the climb involved scaling up rock faces that are really high and very vertical. It was pretty unnerving for me, since I have absolutely zero rock climbing experience in my life.
Eventually, about 200 feet short of the summit, we all decided it was getting way too scary for us and we decided to turn around. Here is a nice Michigan Cycling picture of us as high as we got.
Then came the way down. We decided we wanted to explore a different way down and not take the plateau back. When we looked out at the next ~3 miles of what we had to do, for some reason we didn't register the fact that there appeared to be absolutely no trail across the boulder field that extended further than we could see. I thought that there would be a trail once we got a little lower. There wasn't. The picture below shows much of what we spent about 7 hours hiking over. Sometime the rocks were really loose, so we had to be careful not to start rockslides (which we were not always successful at). Sometimes the boulders were the size of cars and trucks and were also difficult to find a way around.
Finally, we found our way to a river, which led us back to a very primitive trail. Here is a good picture of a waterfall along the river.
Like I said, overall, I want to say that I enjoyed this hike. But the second half of the second day was just miserable for all of us. Brad is still having trouble walking because the bouldering put humongous blisters on his feet. And it started storming and downpouring on us when we were still trying to get out. And we had to hike the last three miles in complete darkness. So, if I was to ever do this again (I'm still telling myself I will never do it again), I will make sure to stay away from the way we went the second day.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

July Report

July is by far the best cycling month I have had since I have moved to Montana. It started out great, with the first month that I made it through the first week without taking any time off. The knee brace has really been helping my knee, and I have been starting to wean myself off of it (though a recent backpacking trip may have set me back a little with the rehab).

I ended July with 6 days off, 40.35 total hours on the bike, 514.3 miles ridden, and 1 race. I spent 23.65 of the 40.35 hours on the MTB, so it is nice to finally have the ratio back in the favor of mountain biking, though there is probably only a little over a month of good mountain bike riding left here in Montana.

Through July, I have already taken 87 days off, which is 41% of the year. Hopefully I can finish out the year with numbers like July so that I can not take more than 50% of the year off. It is true that a lot of the time off is due to the knee injury, but a lot of it is not.

It should be easier to keep this pace going, since right now my racing schedule looks like I will have a race all but three weekends starting this weekend going until Iceman. Also, as I mentioned before, I should have a more structured training plan once I start talking to a cycling coach.

That's it for now. Look forward to a post in the next couple days about Al's and Andrew's trip here from Michigan and our adventure up to Granite Peak (the highest point in MT, 12,799 ft).