An Off Month

After 612 miles, June is done. Not a bad tally considering that last June saw only 447, but still significantly down from the past two months, each at 700+. Had it not been for my resting in preparation for the Lyle Pearson 200 and LeBow Century, I'd have likely made that mark again. 'Salright - a fair trade, I'd say. Both of those rides were a ton of fun.

Oh boy, here come the %#&%$@ fireworks. Eighty-seven brush fires in the past three days isn't enough for the rednecks around here.

Hubbard Time Trial

Another great TT. I improved my time from the last TT by six seconds despite the wind and royally screwing up my turn. Plus tonight we had two TT rookies: Gatlin's dad Mike (thanks in part to my underhandedness) and my commute buddy Justin. Both of them did great.

Justin is a great match for me - about my age and about my speed - I gained maybe 30 seconds on him over the ten miles. He and his friends decided to enter their first triathlon & race one another in a couple months, and I have a feeling he's gonna make them cry. :) He's also planning to be on my 2010 Lyle Pearson team, and we may even be able to team up on a stage and paceline if we stay so evenly matched through next spring.

Mike, on the other hand, has been harping about how out of shape he is since we met this spring, but he absolutely destroyed all the expectations for a slow time that he'd built up with his sandbagging. He clocked just 30 seconds over my first ten-mile TT time ever. Great job Mike!

Hubbard Time Trial, Take Two

I finally got to ride my second Hubbard Time Trial yesterday. Clocked 25:40 - about half a minute better than my first attempt at this course a few weeks ago. Gat came out too and showed how it's done on his first time trial with a time in the low 27-minute range - way faster than my first. And he wasn't even in his aero bars the whole time. A little work on pedaling efficiency and he'll be tearing things up. He also wants me to run with him. We'll see how that goes. :) Kristin Armstrong rode there too, and of course shooshed past us at lightning speed. Being soundly throttled by an Olympic gold medalist is about as close to bicycling stardom as I stand to get. :)

LeBow 2009

What a great ride. To be sure, all the LeBow rides I've been on have been great; but this year's was truly exceptional - both as a charity ride and for personal and social reasons.

Let me just get the social reasons out of the way quickly because I'm a bit sick of talking about it but still feel the need. This week saw the third fatal collision between a bicycle and a car in the valley in as many weeks. I'm angry about it beyond words, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I considered not riding this weekend because of my anger, but I realized on my way to the start of LeBow that that would have been the worst possible decision. A good ride with some friends was exactly what I needed and likely exactly what the Treasure Valley's cycling community needed.

This was to be my first century ride (that's 100 miles for the uninitiated; and a metric century is 100 km - ~62 miles). I've made the LeBow ride my venue for new distance thresholds a couple years in a row now, and this was no exception. For this ride, I tagged along with some friends of mine - Bruce & Ken (the Wiley brothers) and their friends. They're all strong riders but not particularly interested in speed, so they were perfect to force me to pace myself so I wouldn't bonk at mile 50. We did the whole thing at an average of about 15 MPH. And it just occured to me that I didn't do much pulling. I suppose I did some, but our friend John probably did more than his share. Anyway, that easy pace allowed me to keep enough in my tank for my usual butt-busting homeward hammerfest at 20+. Like usual, this wasn't planned, but I suppose as John said of others earlier in the ride, I "could smell the barn." :)

But before I talk about that, I'll review the first 90 miles. They were all special. The ride down Pump Road was exhilarating, and I will have to make that a climb I do a few times in the coming weeks & months. I finally stopped to see Map Rock after three or four rides going right past it! The course was beautiful, most of the roads were acceptable, and all of the rest stops were excellent. Great food for refueling and great people to chat up.

The weather up to my aforementioned solo homeward effort had been near perfect - a few sprinkles got us a bit damp but everything for the most part was dry, the temperature was in the 60s, and the wind was minimal. After breaking away from John though, I found myself in a torrential downpour of rain and wind and hail. And shortly thereafter I saw a gold Pontiac Aztec driving out of the maelstrom. I saw that and thought, "Oh I know who that is!" Sure enough, a hand came off the steering wheel & pointed at me. Yep - Mike again coming out to check on me. :) And this time his son Gatlin was with him. They teamed up to take some interesting pictures including the ones shown here. The first is in the heart of the storm - it doesn't capture the wildness, but you can see I'm soaked. The second is my favorite - a couple miles after the first, charging up the hill on Midway Rd from Roosevelt to Lake Lowell Ave.

Thanks to so many people for helping me on my first century: Ken & Bruce for letting me tag along with them, everyone at TRHS for organizing the ride, all the volunteers, Rhiannon for holding it all together, and of course Mike and Gat for (again) cheering me on and taking pictures. And speaking of Mike & Gat, they kicked some butt on the 35-miler - both have made marked progress in just a few weeks. Great job, guys.

The Lyle Pearson 200

On Tuesday, June 2, I got a call from Tyler; who told me that a second teammate of his in the Lyle Pearson 200 (map) was out with an injury.  He said that he'd suggested me as an alternate.  I agreed, flattered, to do what I could.  With only four days notice, I could do little to prepare but rest.  The other team members had been seeking out hills and riding intervals for months.  I'd done nearly zero intervals since the Broome TT, and my only intense riding was at the only Hubbard Time Trial I'd managed to ride so far.  The only appreciable hill I'd ridden this year (truly ever on a road bike) was on the Arbon Valley ride.  

Anyway, my total climbing for the entire Arbon Valley ride was less than or equal to the elevation gain on my first leg of today's ride.  Whew!  But I rode it and did pretty well.  A real highlight was seeing Mike, a friend from Skinny Tire, show up to drive along and whoop it up a little for us.  His cheering gave me a bundle of extra energy and took my mind off the pain for a short while, and I found myself going a couple MPH faster after our encounter.  Much appreciated, Mike - sincerely.  I'm smiling in the picture shown here only because I was so pleased to see you.  And here's the BIG highlight for the day: at the beginning of that leg, Daniel (my teammate) handed off the lead to me, and I was able to hand it off to Tyler.  And a little icing on that cake: John (another teammate - actually the guy whose place I took after he hurt his knee) said that the lead that we built up had people talking.  But as he quickly pointed out, "There comes a time when the hare knows that the hawk will catch him."  :)  The faster riders generally started later than the slower ones, so it was only a matter of time before the heroes would catch us.  A mechanical difficulty meant that Tyler relinquished the front spot on the following descent and our glory would not survive another stage - but that's okay because he's still alive.  :)

Anyway, moving on to my second leg . . . this one was from Banner Summit to Stanley - losing a total of about 650 feet in elevation.  It was one of the longest segments of the race - about 25 miles, and the first six miles or so was a significant but relatively gentle descent (less than 1%) that gave me momentum to carry through the rest of the leg, which undulates 18 more miles down to Stanley losing 400 more feet from the base of the descent.  About half-way along this leg, I felt my batteries draining and knew that I'd be useless on another leg (I was slated to participate with everyone else in the last leg).  Knowing that the others would be able to move faster on that last leg without me, I determined to blow everything I had left right where I was.  So I held my steady state until Stanley appeared before me, about two miles away.  Seeing my goal, I judged myself, gritted my teeth, and successfully emptied my tank in those last two miles en route to the transition.

There, I handed off the radio to Tyler, who had the unenviable task of riding the next leg (probably the longest leg) alone & into the wind.  I really got off easy in this race with my assignments.  Rod and Daniel are the two guys on our team that really deserve kudos - they both rode up & down Galena Summit and blew straight through the last transition area to pull us to the finish line while Tyler & I lounged in the truck (Tyler spent himself on his last solo leg too).

Results were just posted a while ago, and we finished in 31st place out of 69 teams.  Not bad at all.  Anyway, it was a great time.  I've already started work on assembling my own team for next year.

Twenty-Six Minutes, Thirteen Seconds

That was my time today over the ten-mile Hubbard Time Trial.  10 miles in 26:13 works out to 22.9 miles per hour.  That far surpassed both my time in the Broome TT and my expectations for the evening (though it was about in line with my hopes for the evening).

Thanks to my friend Bruce and his wife Nancy for the pictures.  Also note in them, like the Broome TT, I'm smiling at the start but not at the finish.  And look at those skinny freakin' legs!  Dang, I'm eating as much as I can shove down my throat.  And they don't look that skinny from the first-person perspective.  :)

The Arbon Valley Ride

It's been a month.  I suppose I should post something.  Here's what I did last weekend.

A couple months ago Kate let me know that she was gonna be heading to Pocatello to stay with our friend Shannon and go to a DOCNA trial.  I decided that I needed to get some climbing done and a change of scenery wouldn't hurt either. Also I didn't want to be left alone with the cats for a weekend. So I decided to tag along with Kate for the weekend, bring my bike, and ride up Mink Creek & down Arbon Valley on Saturday.

So off I went with chamois butter in my shorts.  Rode six miles and stopped at the agility trial along Quinn Rd.  A perfect place to stretch & refill my water bottles before starting in earnest.  Continuing on, I headed south into town, turned down Garfield Ave, and rode past the hovel that Kate & I had the great misfortune of calling home for three years.  The last time I'd ridden these roads, I considered the eight-mile ride from there up to the NWS office near the airport to be long.

After passing an old man riding a bike & talking to himself on Garfield, I hopped back on the main drag at Benton St and continued south out of town.  Watched a kid barrelling down a hill out of a side street and onto the main drag, almost getting himself run over.  My first little rest stop was at the mouth of Gibson Jack Creek - about 14 miles into the ride.  The road was about to turn up Mink Creek Road.  From there I'd gain about 1000 feet through some small rollers for a few miles and then hit the steep 780-foot climb.  So I pulled into Gibson Jack Road, drank some gatorade, and ate a Clif Bar before continuing on.

Two thirds of my way through the rolling section, I entered the Caribou National Forest.  There was a little turn-out there so I pulled over again to stretch & empty my bladder.  I learned a couple things here that I should have learned a long time ago:  1) all else being equal, the inside of a curve in the road is better for hiding from traffic than the outside of a curve; and 2) when hiding from traffic to pee on the outside of a curve, it is more prudent to ensure that trees are obscuring the view of you from both legs of the turn than from the apex of the turn.  But I had a nice view of Scout Mountain from there, about 5 miles away over some lower hills in the middleground (the first picture).

And so I continued on up the hill.  The steep part wasn't really all that steep, and it was less of a challenge than I thought it would be though I was still very happy to round the last curve and see Crystal Summit.  Not a single car passed me on the way up - I thought that was odd.  The second picture is a view looking from Crystal Summit into Arbon Valley.  The snow-covered mountain on the far horizon is called Deep Creek Peak.  It's a little over 18 miles away from Crystal Summit (straight-line distance), and my ride was to take me within about eight miles of it.

The ride down the back side of Crystal Summit was really fun.  Steeper and twistier than I remembered it being from the one or two drives I took that way back when I lived in Poky.  An excellent time.  A somewhat close encounter with a bull got the old heart racing a bit, and a longer ride south than I was expecting got me to pull off the road and check my map.  But all was well.  And the road kept going down and down and down.  I thought I was gonna have to make another climb that I missed while studying the route.  But that climb never came.  I finally came to the end of S Mink Creek Road and turned north on Arbon Valley Road - mile 37 of the journey and the start of the homeward leg.  

Still heading down a gentle rolling grade with a small tailwind, I was sustaining 25 MPH and grinning ear to ear right about that time.  But somewhere around mile 45 or 50, I started realizing that I hadn't brought enough food.  I brought enough for the ride itself, but I failed to realize that I'd be riding right through lunch time.  I was confident that I wouldn't be so grossly undernourished that I wouldn't get home, but I knew I was in for a struggle for the last few miles.   The third picture is looking south along Arbon Valley Road to Deep Creek Peak (very roughly ten miles away) from a point near where I came to this realization.

So the last fifteen miles or so was less enjoyable, but only partially because of the lack of nutrition.  Around the start of the final fifteen, Arbon Valley opened up onto the Snake Plain.  As a result, the wind went from being at my back to kicking me right in mouth.  Less enjoyable.  And the terrain became flat so the road became straight.  Less enjoyable.  But hey, it was still more enjoyable than . . . well than a heck of a lot of things.   All told, I figured I got about 2200 feet of climbing over 70 miles of beautiful, lightly traveled roads through montane aspen stands and sage covered valleys.