Winter Park Mountain Circuit One

This race was the day after the first WP race, the Hill Climb. My legs were pretty dead from the hill climb, so I wasn't too sure how I would do. My friend Rob came up Saturday afternoon to pre-ride the course and race on sunday. After he heard how well I did in the hill climb in beginner category he talked me in to upgrading to sport for the next day's race.

This race was out to a loop, ride the loop twice and then another out to the finish on the opposite side we started from. Here is a map: This race was REALLY hard. I left everything I had on the course, but was unable to stay with the lead group. It was also difficult to pass people and be passed during all the tight single track sections.

I ended up finishing in tenth place, which I was pretty happy about my finish since I had just moved up a category. My full results are here.

My friend Rob raced in the expert category and finished in 3rd place only 4 minutes off of the winner. I was pretty impressed.

Here are some pics. This is my start (i think):






Here is Rob's Start. Rob is number 1053:

Here is Rob getting his medal:

This is Rob and I at the awards ceremony:

Winter Park Hill Climb

So, this year I decided to bike racing more of a try, especially mountain biking. I joined the actual race team of my cycling club, ICCC, and by being on the team I was given a good discount on a bike purchase, but also had to commit to racing 6 races. On June 17th, I participated in my first mountain bike race of the year at Winter Park Resort. It was a ‘hill climb’ that involved riding up to the top of Mary Jane from the base of Winter Park on a 5.3 mile long fire road including over 2000 vertical feet of elevation gain. I’ve been doing a lot of training, but mostly on my road bike and haven’t done a whole lot of race pace training on my mountain bike.

Kendra, Marcia and I drove up Friday night and camped near winter park at the base of Berthoud pass in a campground called Robber’s Roost. It was nice, but a little to close to the road, creating lots of noise. It was pretty cold, but we kept warm in our 4 season tent that we borrowed and nice warm sleeping bags.

We got up early and headed over to the winter park base where the start of the race was to be held. I went over and got my race number at the start line and then headed back to the car to get my bike and myself ready for the race. After my bike was all set I started warming up by riding up the road back towards Berthoud pass. I thought it was going to be a faster ride back to the resort and rode out a little to far on my warm up and had to race back to the car. I grabbed the girls and then had them hustle over to the start line with me. I was getting a little anxious though so I went on ahead. I got to the line about a minute before they started, just in time to hear the start line official give his informational speech.

At exactly 10:48 they blew the horn and we were off! I was pretty well warmed up, much better than my first ever mountain bike race last year, which is a good thing because this race starts straight up the mountain! I tried not to go out to fast so I wouldn’t burn myself out to quickly. I just wanted to try to settle in to a good rhythm, not caring too much about the other racers, but also trying not to let any of them get away.

A few guys pulled out ahead quickly, but I was able to hold back and let them have their fun. I settled in behind a few guys in about 4th or 5th place. By now, one guy was about 100 feet off the front, but we didn’t worry and just stayed at our own pace. The guy in front of me was quickly burnt out and dropped off and I jumped onto the guy’s wheel in front of him. He led me up past the guy that was dropping off in front of him and another guy and then there was only one guy left in front of us. The guy right in front of me was going at a pretty good pace, but I was able to stay on his wheel. We were slowly reeling in the guy who was off the front because he had gone out of the gates a little to fast. Before the first mile was behind us we had caught him! Now it was just me and this other guy in front of me, wearing a black jack porter jersey. He was going at a very good pace, but I was able to hold on around the first couple turns. I looked back, and we had a very good gap on the rest of our field. By this point we started passing some of the field that had started before us. I was starting to feel tired and wondering if I could keep this pace up for the rest of the race. I looked back again as we went around another switch back and could not see anyone from our field. However, this guy I was following was starting to pull away. I tried to chase back on to him, but he was going too hard and continued to pull away from me. I tried, but just could not match his effort and soon he was out of sight. I continued to work as hard as I could without blowing up and kept picking off riders from the earlier category starts. I looked back again and saw that I had second place in the bag and so just tried to push to get the best time I could without bonking. I soon saw the top of the mountain approaching and gave it all I had to the end.

I finished in 2nd place with a time of 45:53.6, just under 5 minutes behind 1st place and almost 10 minutes ahead of 3rd place. Complete results can be found here.

We decided to hang out for the awards ceremony and I received a silver medal for my efforts. J This was a great race. It was well organized, very fun, and an amazingly beautiful venue.

Sharefest!

Two weekends ago (June 10th and 11th) my church participated in the annual "Sharefest" of Boulder County. This is an event where several churches in the area team up and help out the Boulder Valley School District by donating free work to their school such as painting, repairing, landscaping, cleaning, etc. This year 7 churches teamed up to work on 8 schools. My church was given Boulder High School to work on. We spent the majority of our efforts painting the cafeteria and hallways, doing some landscaping work and cleaning there really cool central atrium. It was a lot of fun and also hardwork. I was the team leader for my life group and we were in charge of painting a certain corner of the cafeteria. That was done pretty quickly and my team left for other jobs and I was left to work with only Kendra. We had a good time putting the finishing touches on our corner. We are both somewhat perfectionistic and so we can spend many hours just painting one corner. I think it looked great when we were done though. After the corner was finished we had the priviledge of painting a window sill and the wall around it. I think we did a great job on that as well. We spent the rest of our saturday cleaning paint drops off of the floor.

The next morning (sunday) we showed up and were assigned to help paint the doors that enter the cafeteria. Kendra and I assisted by removing the push plates on the doors so the painters could paint under them and not have to mask them. We also masked the edges of the doors. After that we were put in charge of cleaning paint drops off of chairs that should not have been used to stand on while painting. That was not a very fun job, but we got through it by focusing on how we are blessing the school and glorifying God with our service. At around 11:15 we finished up and headed to the mackey auditorium on CU campus for a huge worship service with all 7 churches that participated in sharefest. It was awesome worshiping with that many people (the auditorium was packed) and seeing a large portion of the church body in boulder coming together in one place. It was really cool when some of the school officials got on stage and expressed their thankfulness for what had been done and tried to estimate how much money had been saved for their schools.

It is awesome when the body gets together and stands along side with the community; loving them and serving them. That is how communities can really be reached for Christ. All glory and honor is HIS!

Fruita!

The next morning on our quest for single track on the westen slope we got up early in order to beat the heat, had a quick breakfast and headed to the trail head. It was already getting pretty warm at 8am! We started by climbing up toward the book cliffs on the Prime Cut trail. It is desigend for climbing up to the other trails that are used for descending back down to the trail head. It was a pretty mellow climb, but still had some challenges. There was one huge rock the trial went over the neither of us could clear.

After we finished the climb we traversed over to Joe's Ridge and took this trail back down. It was a screamer that rode down on top of some ridges with a few really steep parts. In one section we were descending down some hill that was too steep for our brakes to stop us completely and there was a steep drop off on both sides of the trail. It was pretty thrilling!

After we were back at the bottom we took the campsite road for an easy climb back up the the other trails and traversed over to "western zippety". It was a pretty hilly traverse though and one section had some really nasty switchbacks. Kendra gave it her best and was a great sport. I was quite impressed. Western zippety was a smooth, fast singletrack that screamed back to the bottom, past the trail, so we had to make our way back to our car on a 4wd road and a dirt road.

I had a blast riding these trails and can't wait to make it back out there soon. Kendra did an amazing job riding these trails and I know she is going to be a great biker. I can't wait to go riding with her again.

Idependence Monument

Last weekend (6/3) Kendra and I ventured to the western slope of colorado for a little camping and mountain biking. We didn't head out until late saturday morning so we didn't get to our destination until about 4:30pm. On the way out we stopped in Minturn to use a bathroom and found a cool little winery there. We stopped and split a tasting between the two of us. They had a Reisling, a Merlot, and a Port. The Reisling was amazing, the merlot was ok and the port was not that great. Anyways, After we got to Fruita we stopped by over the edge sports to talk about which trails we should ride and bought a map. Then we decided to wait until later in the evening to ride after the heat had passed some (it was 95 degrees that day). So in the meantime we ventured into the Colorado National Monument. We'd never been there before and were quite amazed by the beauty of the place. It is a very breathtaking landscape and the main attraction is a formation that looks similar to the man made national monument in D.C. It was quite cool. God is such an amazing artist.

After we had taken in enough of the park, we headed over to the Mary's Loop group of trails and rode the rustler's loop. It is designed as a practice loop for the area and has signs posted along the way with tips and tricks for better mountain biking. They also designed in as much of the different terrain the the area has to offer so that beginners can get a taste of everything they may encounter. I thought it was a very cool loop. It also was on top of a bluff over looking the colorado river and had some amazing views. We had a blast on the trail and Kendra did a great job. She only had to dismount for one obstacle! After the ride we got some mexican food and went out to search for a campsite in the dark.