In a nutshell

To milwaukee, home, back to Milwaukee, back to home, to Madison, back home,to Green Bay, and now just settled into a hotel in Marquette. Also some good miles on the bike without the need to get prepped for any races and even a couple group rides, and for anyone who knows me that is rare. the riding has been awesome as of late and I am really digging the new S-Works SL3!!!! Talk about a rocket ship!!

So my week has been fun. I rode with Big D on Wednesday night and had one of my biggest meltdowns in a long time! It was toward the end of the ride so the "ride of shame" was short and we did not get passed by any old ladies carrying flowers in their front basket on their bike! Then to finish the legs off Michelle and I went to Neenah and did the Thursday night ride out of Gear N Up! Scotty B is a good friend and it is always fun to see him and everyone else in the area. The ride was pretty tame and for the most part everyone just took turns pulling their weight and keeping the pace up there. It was definitely fun to go back to where I really got going. I remember that I used to just hang on for dear life and last night I barely averaged a HR in my endurance zone. Reminded me that all the hard work has paid off.

Now my next dilemma is what kind of riding I should do for the weekend? I have both bikes along and both the road riding and mountain biking look to be awesome up here! Any suggestions?

Recharging

Feel like things are finally coming back to me a bit.  Last week was a busy one and left me a bit worn down.  All I have to say on my last week, never, ever, ever think of putting in a commercial pool!  They make changes to codes/regulations seems like once a week which had us draining the pool last week for some guy to come in and take pictures/measurements and was only there for not even an hour!!  So 5 days of work for someone to walk around for an hour!

On the fun side, Michelle and I went to Milwaukee last weekend.  She race the Stupidweeks race on Saturday morning and just missed the break.  She ended up riding around with the 2nd group of 6 where no one wanted to work or help chase the 4 off the front.  Either way she said she still had fun and pulled off a top 10.  We then met Mikey, yup Mike Phillips, and Darrin at Crystal ridge to beat up on each other.  Loads of fun, not the trails so much but riding with those two!  We then continued with dinner and a Booze cruise out on the Gulf de Milwaukee!!  They had a live band on board and my people watching skills were in total overload!!

On Sunday we took the clan out to The Kettles.  I have not been there in over 4 years!  Man they have been busy building new trails!! So we started out slow on the blue loop then turned it up and beat each other into submission!  Again another fun day on the bike!!

This week I am moving forward with prep for the big races to come and it is going well.  It is rare that I am so motivated this late in the year, but I like the motivation and I am going to use it. 

Two wheels keep on turning

What a stretch of racing.  I do not not know why I cannot just make myself focus on certain races, but I love to race my bike so I sign up for everything.  So what have I been upto, lets start all the way back in April, here is my race schedule that I just completed:

24-Apr NUE Cahutta 100
2-May WORS #1 Iola
9-May Rasta Rally
16-May WORS #2 Rhinelander
23-May
30-May WORS #3 Wassau
6-Jun NUE Mohican 100
13-Jun WORS #4 Kewauskum
20-Jun Kewaunaw Chain Drive
26-Jun WORS #5 Subaru Cup ProXCT
4-Jul Firecracker 50
11-Jul WORS #6 Eau Claire

Not too bad considering the couple 100s in there and the 50.  Which for the Firecracker 50, if you have not done I highly recommend it.

So onto Eau Claire.  The group started the drive home from Colorado on Thursday, a quick stop in Baraboo Friday night to drop everyone off, Michelle and I made it home at 10:30PM Friday night, up on Saturday morning to watch the tour, throw everything in the car, then off again!! Love the trail in Eau Claire and would not miss it now matter how tired I am! Etiehr way the "GOOOOO" went off and i settled into 3rd wheel going into the first section of single track, a little bobble coming out and then in 4th behind Tristan.  Then halfway through the lap my chain dropped.  Faught it back on and settled into 12th.  Couple passes and then on the 2nd lap saw Ryan putting his chain on?????  Anyone else have problems dropping the chain on the "XX" rings??  Seems to fall from the big ring, over the small and likes to wedge between the frame and small ring?  I am trying new chainrings and chain this week, hope that helps cause it has happened enough to both Ryan and I to really become a problem. 

Either way, back to the race.  I could not chase back on with Ryan so I let him go. He ended up getting back to the group of 6 and actually took them for 4th spot nice work!!!  He had the ideal situation to sit in the group cause he was not going to chase down Darrin and I was dangling off the group so it was up to everyone else to pull and he played it right.  Darrin has a gresat ride again and finished 3rd.  TSP also had a good ride in 11th, Sott came in 28th, and Mark finished 4th in his age!! On the womens side, they are still making us look bad.  Lisa came in for 3rd, Di for 4th, and Michelle for 7th even after breaking off her grip and going over the bars.  She said she was a bit shaken and took her a little bit of time to regain her composure, but still pulled out a good finish.  We have concluded on the team that no matter how the year finishes up we are nominating her for the "Most Improved Rider" award. 

So, next on the schedule?  Reload and get ready for the Triple crown races. 

Shortest Epic Ever

Yesterday turned out to be the shortest epic mountain bike ride in history.  Brian, Spencer, Ryan, and I headed out French's Gulch headed to the land of bliss singletrack descents.  We were spinning along up the hill and at about th 20 minute mark, mother nature decided to hurl hail at us the size of M&Ms.  We ended up takign cover underneath a bunch of trees:

We ended up hanging out for about 30 minutes as it continued and started to turn the trail white!

It let up for a little bit, but it was just enough to get us out from our shelter so that she could throw more at us.  After taking shelter in the woods and a couple close lightning strikes we decided to fly down the hill and back to the truck.  By the time we reached the truck we were all so cold and beaten from being pelted with hail.  After having to bail on our last ride out here, we decided to improve our moods by hitting up the Breck Brewery!  That helped!  We are leaving today and next up will be Eau Claire!

Easy spin down the bike path

Well that is what it was supposed to be.  Kind of hard to do that with all the trails hidden in the mountains calling your name.  So all of us rolled out of the condo, ripped down the hill we are staying on, and I mean ripped at like 40 mph on knobbies for the 4 miles to town. We then hit up the bike pat hbetween Avon and Vail.  It was nice to just roll along and spin the legs.  Once into Vail the decision was made to head up to this overlook that followed the Wednesday night race hillclimb.  After 20 minutes of climbing we came to the top and we had a great look of where we came from:

After the 20 minutes of climbing we figured that there had to be a trail to cut us accross to the condo since we were at the same elevation.  We asked a local and got the scoop!  So we all saddled up and headed even fruther up the hill, another 20 minutes up and we found the trail.  It was awesome, this nice flowing trail that had great burms and every so often popped you out into these alpine meadows.  We pushed on, then pushed on, then pushed on....... We have to be there?  I only brought one water bottle as well as everyone else in the group minus Spencer and Ryan who ended up having to share their 2nd bottles with us since this trip was their idea anyway.  At about 3 hrs into the trip we hit this hike a bike section, the section that the local said that if you get to this point you made a wrong turn!  Suck!  Well we hicked it, and hicked it for 20 minutes up these steep, rocky sections till we finally found the road that we were looking for. when we came out onto the road the trail was posted from the other direction:

Needless to say we were all pretty tired by the time we weere done with our trip that went from a ride down the bike path and turned into a 4 hr over the mountain trip.  We then decided a good dinner was in order and at the end I think Lisa can explain the way we all felt:

 Not sure what today has in store, but looking forward to another good adventure!!

All roads lead down

What a fun day!  The guys headed over to Keystone to work on our Super D skills, cause we have lots of those in Wisco!  Either way it was a blast and had lots of fun.  We were there for 3 hrs and managed to get 4 runs in and 28 miles of down!  Sweet!  We kept things pretty chilled and had zero stops at the ER, another plus.  The only casualty of the day was Brian deciding to work on his dismounting skills face first.  We did this fun trail that had an awesome corkscrew that started about 15 feet up then you circled around it down to the ground, it was pretty cool!!  Check it out here. 

Today I think is going to be a chill day and just get some relaxing in.  We have been on the go pretty much since we arrived and most of us seem to be dragging from the affects of racing and altitude starting to really take its tole.  Gonna need a vacation to recover from vacation!  Where to next??

Race Pictures

2 posts in less than 4 hrs, enjoy.

Oxygen Required!

Well I just got a good reminder of how bad it hurts to race at altitude!  I had a good first lap coming through at just a bit over 2hrs, but then we had to do another lap.  Really!  The first one hurt bad enough.  Well, needless to say I had granny gear envy and ended up walking a couple of the really steep rocky climbs.  After all that I ended up running a 2nd lap of 2hr and 44 min! Ouch!  This race out here is awesome though and I will be back.  I will workon getting soe pictures cause we have some pretty good ones within the group.

The girls rocked the team comp and ended up in a sprint finish for 2nd place.  Lisa nipped the girl at the line and even ended it with a nice fist pump.  Was pretty cool to watch and they are really starting to make the guys look bad!!

Today we are thinking bou tdoing downhill runs at Keystone.  Never done it before and it sounds like fun!  Lets hope my next post is not from the ER!

Invasive species

That's what I have, so the doctors say, and it will not go away.  The word that I am getting is I have a Bronchial virus or something.  All I know is I have a fever, shortness of breath, and just want to sleep all the time.  Not even my multiple daily lattes seem to help anymore.  I am not sure I believe all this, but I do know that I am not at 100% which is not good when you are headed to elevation to race.  Either way, we are off to Colorado and looking forward to the entire experience.  I will do my best to keep up with post and maybe even get some incriminating pictures cause I know either Ryan or I will do something stupid while we are there!!