"When you think you're hot you're not"

Did I need to launch the hip before the rooty dip?...Yes, of course.

Was the tail whip necessary?...Duh-always.

Was it asking too much to land onto a tree-skinny into the downhill?...Indeed, it was a little excessive.

Ouch. Yesterday I was out for a spin and couldn't resist shredding my favorite downhill around. Almost to the bottom there are a few dips into hips type rolls in the trail that you can launch pretty smoothly around the turns. Nothing special but lots of fun. Sometimes I  land onto a downed tree that's parallel to the trail and serves as a pretty sweet skinny. Well, yesterday was the end of that. My front wheel went straight through the tree at about 18mph and my bike just stopped. I, however, continued down the trail much like that guy down there chasing the cheese. To my dismay there was no cheese. Just rocks and roots and trees. Knocked the wind right out of myself and put a couple of nice, new, custom tattoos on my back. The V-Gear jerseys are so durable though-my back is all rock rashed and sliced up but the jersey didn't even tare.

"When you think you're hot you're not" was all I heard as I was careening through the woods. That's what we tell the Single Track kids to try to keep them from coming down with the stupids. I must have said it at least ten times the other night. Well, after my recent experiment I can confirm...When you think you're hot you're not! I can also confirm that listening to old school 90's rap while riding more often then not leads to a case of the stupids.

Been way too busy to get to an actual race recap of the Summer Solstice and since the weekend is almost here I doubt it's gonna happen. To make a long story short:

The End.

Chico Racing 24 Hours of Summer Solstice - quickie report

What a weekend :) As usual the Summer Solstice was an incredible experience. There were 38 teams in our field (5 man 149-200) and we pulled 2nd in what was the closest, most intense team race i've ever done. We held the lead until the last three laps...long story short we pulled 2nd with 1st just a minute away. I'll put up a full report after i'm recovered enough to type more then a paragraph.

That ain't no cat!



24 Hours of Summer Solstice Time!

2010 Start

Chico Racing's 24 Hours of Summer Solstice  is upon us! I'm headed across the border to tackle this race for my third time. You know what they say right? "Third time's the charm..." right??  

If you haven't raced a Chico Racing event then you don't know what you're missing-you gotta check them out. Time to hit the road!

Course preview:

*Chico Racing Summer Solstice Update
*Chico Racing Dot Com

Crankskins Wrap your crank(s)!

Head over to Crankskins.com to protect your entire rig, not just your cranks.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day Dad!
My dad's cooler then your dad...for real!

Thanks for everything throughout the years dad, 
and Mom-thanks for putting up with us both!
Love you guys!

#1 Dad!

Where I got my obsession with sports and shredding pretty much anything  from....



Looking forward to my parents moving back from Germany soon...but man will I miss the grub!





Squirrels.org

Squirrels.org

Dirty Duathlon Race Report

Sometimes a haiku is absolutely necessary:

 Oh Ellicottville,

Roots, rocks, climbs, flows, mud in toes.

The dirt tastes so good!

  

Saweet! The Dirty Duathlon in Ellicottville was yesterday. We didn't get lost, we didn't have to drive through anything epic. We had a fun, quick and easy drive, easy registration. I almost feel like I cheated the system Sunday morning. Action shot to the right of Doug @ reg-look at that technique! 

The course was the same as the 6 Hours of Power Course but much shorter. It's my favorite course around though because it starts with a 1.6 mile climb up dirt roads and double track and then dumps riders onto glorious single track that's so much fun to ride you don't even know you're in a race. The longer the climb the better I do, so I love the extra boost of confidence I have when I race this course. It's even got a few super techie rock spots in it as well as your fair share of roots and obstacles. As far as a race course goes-primo!

Conditions Sunday were not epic, but close enough. I'm really happy I switched to my tready Specialized rubbers Saturday evening because I needed the traction in the mountain top muck. It was that kind of muck that hardens like Quickcrete, but the FastTrak sheds so well I didn't even notice. It's so fun to shred those trails when they're covered in slimy muck-the roots and rocks are quite tricky when saturated. My Specialized Stumpjumper was silly. The whole time I was constantly impressed/surprised with how much better the hardtail 29er was on that course then my Blue FS was, especially bombing through the rock garden and while racing up the initial climb. I just keep loving that rig more! It still has no name...nothings come to me yet.

The format was Run 1 lap, bike 2. Doug started for us with the punishment, oops I mean "run," and pulled an impressive lap and tagged off to me with our ranking somewhere in the back of the top 10. Then I got to just have fun riding awesome trails. Much of my ride I was thinking to myself "man, this spot must have been horrible to run." Gotta give props to the runners...I would not have ran that course for anything less then a large fee! It must have been so treacherous on foot. After passing everyone but Trevor (fellow Crankskins rider) I settled in about 30 seconds behind him for the rest of the first lap. Second lap I hammered the climb again, stuck a stick into T's spokes to pass him, and then held 1st spot through the finish. He and his runner (I think his middle name was Fast) pulled 2nd overall so it was a great day for the Crankskins crew. Scotto and his Marathon runner pulled a nice finish as did Dave. Fun times.

That evening Chels got tied up with work so I walked down to the Jazz fest with my bud Cam and his parents (our friends). Afterwards we had some dinner and hung out for a bit. He's 13 months old and was having so much fun I just couldn't find it in me to stop him! hahah, he wrecked our place and it was hard not to join in. I had my camera on my desk from the race so I was able to snap that shot of him after he ate some of Luna's cat food and went bonkers. Clean up was not so fun :(

Pre-Race Rubber Ritual

Tires, tires, tires. If you ask me the tire is certainly the most important component after the frame and brakes. I'm an over-thinking, note taking, Excel crunching, relentlessly habitual offender when it comes to my tires. I always take close note of  how they do on particular genres of trail, different weather conditions, pressures, courses, ect. I track my mileage on my tires, my results with tires, my feelings towards them...their behaviors, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses. I know everything there is to know about everything regarding my tires. I stress each race about which tires to run-fast or slow, safe or fast, gonzo or grandma. So what's with my decidophobia come race day?

It's come to my attention that 100% of the time come race day I have erred on the side of "better safe then sorry" and run my go to combo for pretty much anything any course can throw my way. For the umpteenth time I spent yesterday and today weighing the pros and cons, asking around about conditions in Ellicottville, reading over their weather history for the past week, mulling my options, ect. Once again last minute I finally made the decision to leave the Renegade home and run my  Captain/FastTrak combo. Then it hit me a few minutes ago while making my weekly tire shuffle-"You dumb ass you do this every week!"

Ellicottville tomorrow morning for my first Duathlon, the Dirty Duathlon. I'm pretty excited. My teammate Doug's gonna have some extra fast for breakfast and rip out the run portion, then I get to shred a couple laps with my mtb on a glorious course to finish it out for us. Hopefully we'll do pretty well. It's kind of funny...two mtber's showing up at a Duathlon on the same team...but hey, we should do twice as well on the mtb part right?!?!

Garmin Edge Meets Rock

Yesterday I was riding to my trails when out of nowhere a rock was thrown up by a truck, ricocheted off of my helmet's chin guard, and then struck my Garmin Edge with so much force that it actually cracked the screen. The Edges, especially this particular model-the old skule 305-are freakishly durable as i've experienced first hand while taking this one to hell and back, so I could not be more surprised by the damage that was done. Just glad I was wearing my helmet or else that crack would probably be on my face!

After everything we've been through together it certainly doesn't owe me anything-it spent about 20 hours per week in sub freezing temps for the winter (some days it would be 100% iced over), has been dropped, smashed into trees and rocks, submerged in salt water, head butted at full speed while wrecking, heck-I even ran it over in a rock garden once...another story for another day lol.

Luckily Garmin's an excellent company to deal with, and when it comes to their repair/refurb program they seem to actually understand how vital these computers can be to the athletes that use them. They actually care about getting their customers squared away as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible (for real) so i'll just drop it in the mail this fall after my season dies down a little.

Sunny Day