Winter Park #3 - Cross Country Super Loop

The third winter park race was on July 7th. The course consisted of one BIG loop at the ski resort. The map can be viewed here. I raced sport category again so my course was 14.7 miles. The race was pretty hard and I only ended up getting 8th place. I think this was largely due to the very long downhill portion of the race. The complete results can be seen here.

WP#2 - Mountain Circuit One

The second Winter Park race was on June 16th. It was a cross country circuit race which means it was a loop that you do several times. Our category did two loops for about 15 miles of racing with 900 feet of climbing per lap. I also talked my friend and coworker, Derrick, into racing with me. We were in the same category and lined up against each other at noon.

When they blew the whistle I used the same race strategy as I had last week. I fell in behind about the 5th rider and just held on to see what the pace would be. They started out a little faster this week since there was only a short climb at first and then a flat section on fire roads before we hit the singletrack.

I slowly moved up until I was sitting in second place and could see the turn onto the singletrack section. Since it is much more difficult to pass people on the singletrack I made up my mind to get in front before we were there. I was successful and started the singletrack trail in first place.

I held this position for about a mile, but was unable to shake the racers behind me. I was using a lot of energy to lead the way up the climb so when I hit a fairly technical switchback to get around, I had to put a foot down and gave up my lead to two other riders.

I kept pushing to the top and don't think I was passed again. I caught up to some of the guys in front of me by the top of the hill and then we started descending. I was passed by two guys on the descent, but stayed with one of them and passed him again on the uphill part of the next lap. This uphill section was even longer than on the first lap! It was a long hard climb to the top, then we had a very long downhill to the bottom.

When I was almost to to the very bottom, I was going around a tight switchback a little too fast and lost traction on my front wheel. My bike slipped out from under me and I went down hard, scraping up most of the left side of my body. It hurt pretty bad, but I got up right away and got back on my bike. I pushed hard for the finish line and didn't give up my spot. I ended up finishing 4th which I was happy with.

Winter Park Race Series #1

So, I decided to race the Winter Park mountain bike series again this year. I want to try to race the entire series (or only miss one race) so I signed up for the whole series this year. I also want to try to compete for the series title in my category. I signed up to race in sport again and am still in the 25-29 age group.
The first race was on July 9th and was a hill climb starting at the base of the Winter Park resort and finishing on top of the resort at lunch rock. The course is about 5.1 miles long and gains a little over 2000 ft in elevation. There were about 13 riders in my category for this race and we started at 10:27 am. Kendra came with me and was waiting at the start line while I was warming up. I know you won't believe this since I am always on time, but I almost missed the start of my race! The clock on my bike computer is 4 minutes slow and I knew it, but while I was warming up that detail had slipped my mind for a little bit. Once I realized what time it really was I raced to the start line as fast as I could and got there with about 1 or 2 minutes to spare. I think the extended warm up right to the starting time worked out to my advantage though since the course starts out right into the climb and it doesn't let up until the top.
When the gun went off, I tried not to go out too fast, but just fell in the other guys at about 5th place. I wanted to see what the pace was going to be before taking off too fast and blowing up. I just followed the wheel in front of me and the other riders started to fall back. The guy who was way out front started to get reeled in very quickly. Shortly I was sitting in second, following the guy in first's wheel and realized that I wasn't working very hard. At that moment I decided to attack and went around the guy in first and opened up a small gap. I kept on pushing and the next time looked back the gap was pretty sizable. I just kept on pushing at my own pace and I didn't see any of them again until the top! I had actually won my first race! I finished in just over 46 mins. I'm excited to see how I will fare in the overall series rankings for my category...

the wife doctor

I just wanted to share how proud I am of my amazing wife! On May 11th 2007 she graduated with her PhD in Chemistry! I have no idea how she was able to put up with 5 years of grad school, do research, write a dissertation on her research, and then defend it in front of 5 other doctors in chemistry. I am truly awestruck. She has amazing dedication and a very hard work ethic. She is incapable of giving up, even when up against the most difficult of challenges. And she did have many challenges during her career as a grad student, some of them very great. One of the HUGE ones was after developing a new chemical and doing more research on it for over a year, she discovered that the chemical wasn't actually what they thought it was and she had lost all that time spent on researching with it. She amazingly recovered from that blow only to be hit hard by another one. Her advisor's husband got a new job for the Northwest Renewable Energy Lab, so they had to move to Washington state!.... Which meant that Kendra was pressured to finish up her degree faster than she would have (it normally takes 6 years) and her advisor was thousands of miles away, not very convenient. Kendra was able to carry on in spite of this blow to her productivity and finish her degree a year early!



I did get to go to her defense and watch and support her. Her thesis was on something about Synthesizing Nickel(I) and Nickel(II) Diphosphines... whatever that means. Actually, I did understand a fraction of her dissertation because she practiced her defense for me several times. I was very impressed that she had any clue what she was talking about though. Most of it was a different language to me. She had lots of impressive diagrams of molecules as well. AND she didn't seem nervous at all while she was presenting. She did a very professional and excellent job of presenting her defense. She also handled the questions that I got to watch with grace and class.



Well, as you can tell, I am very proud of my wife. I also think it is very cool that I get to call her doctor now. I think she might be the first doctor in both of our families! I better go get my PhD now so she doesn't show me up... actually, I kinda like being out-ranked and out-educated by my spouse. :-)

Praise God for giving me such a smart wife and for helping her to get through her grad school experience successfully.

Mountian Bike Season Kicks Off!

To celebrate my birthday this year, my wife and I went to fruita for a long weekend with some friends: Derrick and Lesley. It was a blast. Unfortunately, Kendra had to work on her thesis most of the weekend and Lesley had to grade papers, so Derrick and I hit up most of the trails just the two of us. We did about 24 miles of riding on friday and 20 miles on saturday. Lesley did join us for a short part friday morning and they both did on Saturday morning. Here are some sweet pics:

are we really free?

I just saw this movie last night on Google video. It is a pretty eye opening documentary on how the government is illegally taxing our income. It also reveals that all of the money they raise by taxing our income goes to pay interest on the federal debt. Did you know that the federal reserve is a privately owned bank? They are making money off of our country's debt and our income taxes are going straight into their pockets. They also have the rights to print our money! This is not right. This film is very interesting as well as disturbing. The entire thing is posted on Google video so that you can watch it for free (on a larger viewer than this too). The movie also talks about how we are headed toward a one world government. I believe that this is true because it was prophesied in the Bible in the book of Revelation. I'm not too worried though because I know that God is in control and that this is all part of his plan to redeem the world. He has already won the victory for me. Are you on His side? Jesus has already paid the price for you to be reconciled to God, all you have to do is believe. This film also talks about how there are plans in the works to implant everyone with an electronic transmitter under their skin that can be used to make purchases and identify you. Could this be the mark of the beast prophesied in Revelations 13:16,17? I know that God will give his people wisdom concerning this so that we can avoid the mark when the time comes. I am so thankful that he is sovereign and I don't need to worry or be fearful. You can visit http://www.freedomtofascism.com to find out more about the movie and it's mission.

bonehead

I made a bonehead move last friday night. I was on my way home from work with my road bike on top of my car and I forgot it was on there and drove into my garage. I even remembered my bike was on top when I pulled into my parking lot, but by the time I reached my garage I had totally forgotten. The collision caused my bike rack's front bar to get knocked off of the car and twisted the bike rack's tray. The tray also got pushed into the roof of the car and scratched Kendra's car pretty bad. My bike fared pretty well, considering. The bike seat was broken off of its rails and my handlebars were a little scratched. That's all I've found so far. Hopefully there isn't any hidden structural damage to my frame. I was able to put the bike rack back onto the car and I think it will still work. There didn't appear to be any major damage to the car where the rack attaches. I felt like a huge bonehead and loser after this happened. However, Kendra got home shortly after this happened and reassured me that I wasn't a bonehead or a loser. She is wonderful. My bike is out of commission for a little while until I can get a new seat. Huge bummer. I guess I'll have to ride my mountain bike in the mean time. At least it's not as bad as it could have been.

TV 'a la carte'?

This article in BusinessWeek talks about how many consumer groups want to see 'a la carte' cable programming available to consumers. If this became a reality, cable customers could purchase only the exact channels that they want to come into their household.



I think this is a great idea and should be implemented by the cable companies. I do not currently pay for any cable because I feel that most TV watching is a waste of my time and a cluttering of my time as well as being fairly expensive. There are a few things that I miss not being able to watch on TV in my house such as Football, Baseball, and Cycling. If cable channels were available 'a la carte' I think I would pay to recieve ESPN, Fox Sports, OLN, and possibly Fox, ABC, CBS, and UPN because they carry football and baseball, but I might decide to not get them because the rest of their content leaves much to be desired.



What do you think?

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The Post

As you know, I work for Ball Aerospace in Boulder, but recently that changed. I now work for Ball Aerospace in Broomfield. They just moved me down to their south campus! This move has both some benefits and some disadvantages.



Benefits: They moved our whole team down here and we are in one large room together so we can all talk to each other easily when we need help or input or just want to talk. I also enjoy the rubber band fights that ensue every now and then. My cubical is an upgrade from my last one (more desk space). There is a sweet cafeteria in Broomfield with cheap food (including breakfast burritos) and 50 cent coffee. The building is a lot newer and nicer and doesn't have asbestos in it like our old one. AND our new building has showers and lockers in the bathroom which is excellent for running and biking at lunch or biking to work. We also have a sweet filter for drinking water that also puts out HOT drinking water. And my awesome friend Derrick sits right next to me and we can talk through the cube partition and shoot rubberbands at each other off the ceiling tiles.



Disadvantages: Location (the drive takes about the same amount of time, but the distance is further so biking to work is a larger task). With this cubicle furniture I have to stare into the corner and face my back to the entrance. I also have a large structural post in the middle of my cube.



Since there is a large post in my cube, I think I should probably name it. Any suggestions?

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Charity

There is a new book out that reports that conservatives give more of their money and time than do liberals. Interesting...

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Being Married Rules!

So, I got married on October 8th to the most amazing girl in the world! (That's one reason why I haven't been blogging much lately.) The wedding was wonderful, I had a great time and everything turned out great. A few things didn't go as planned, but they were only minor things that nobody noticed but us. One bummer was the cold weather, but we didn't let it bother us much. We still put the top down in our convertible car that took us from the church to the reception.

The reception was great. We had a good dinner and a great party with a good band and dancing. It was a lot of fun, but flew by way too fast. We didn't even get to say hi to everybody we wanted to. I really want to thank all our wonderful friends though that helped us make everything happen and supported us through it all. My best man gave a great toast and all the groomsmen were a huge help. The maid of honor also gave a great toast via CD. I also want to thank our parents for supporting us and helping to make everything happen and helping us to survive our lives up to this point. Also, our photographers did an amazing job. Click on these pictures to see their website and our pictures.



Married life is amazing! It is wonderful to be able to live with the person I am most fond of and not have to say goodbye every night. It is also great just living life together and supporting each other. I love making dinner and breakfast for Kendra and really love the lunches she makes for me. It has also been awesome getting our house all put together and fixed up the way we want it. I'm looking forward to the rest of our lives together!

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Seperation of Church and State

I just learned the other day from this article that the "doctrine" of seperation of church and state doesn't exist anywhere in our nation's founding documents. It's not in the Constitution, it's not in the Bill of Rights or even the Declaration of Independence.

"It's not in the Bill of Rights. It's not anywhere in a foundational document. The only place where the so-called "wall of separation" was mentioned was in a letter written by (Thomas) Jefferson to a friend. That's the only place. It has been picked up and made to be something it was never intended to be.

What it has become is that the government is protected from the church, instead of the other way around, which is that church was designed to be protected from the government."

And when Jefferson made this comment he wasn't using it to protect the government from the influence of the church, but was trying to keep the government out of the church's affairs.

"Jefferson politely declined in his letter to use his office for such influence," Hausknecht said, "explaining that the First Amendment prohibited him from doing so because it had created a 'wall of separation of church and state.' Although it's not completely clear among historians as to the complete scope of Jefferson's meaning,
because of the letter's specific historical context it's accurate to say, as Dr. Dobson did, that Jefferson felt the First Amendment protected the church from government interference -- not the opposite."

I thought this article was very interesting because I never knew where the idea of seperation of church and state actually came from and was the intended meaning.

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I'm an uncle!

Nathaniel, our new nephew

As soon as I married Kendra, I became an uncle for the very first time. Crazy! Isn't he cute?

Our Honeymoon in Hawaii

honeymoon

Fat Tire Triathlon

I did one triathlon this year. I kendra got into triathlons after we met. She did her first one two years ago, but I was out of the country during it, so last year she did a sprint triathlon and I watched the whole thing. This year we wanted to do a triathlon together so after looking for a while we chose the Fat Tire Triathlon. It is an off road triathlon (mountain biking and trail running) with an open water lake swim. It takes place near Fort Collins at the Horsetooth Reservoir.

We picked this race partly because it was close to our wedding, but not too close. We thought that it would be at a good time that would encourage us to work out until close to our wedding, but be over soon enough to allow us enough time to dedicate to finish our wedding planning. However, we were so busy with planning most of the summer that we didn't get to train for our race nearly as much as we hoped. I got lots of swimming in and biking, but hardly any running.

Because of this I decided to do the swim as fast as I could, but then wait for kendra (she started 10 minutes after me) in the transition zone so that we could bike and run together. I did the swim in about 12 minutes, which I was pleased with, and then spent over 17 minutes in the transition zone waiting for kendra. It was well worth the wait because I had a blast riding and running with her.

Kendra did a great job in the race! She didn't get scared at all on the swim (even though it was her first open water swim) and swam freestyle the whole way! She didn't even have a wetsuit to use! The water was about 70 degrees, but the air temp was probably around 50 so the water felt warm in comparison. It had rained most of the night before so they weren't even sure if the state park was going to let us do the race on the original course.

Kendra had a good bike ride, pushing hard the entire time. She did fall twice though (spralling out across the entire trail), but she got right back on and kept going both times. The bike was on some fairly mellow, rolling singletrack. The only annoying part was passing people and letting people pass on the tight singletrack. The run was pretty much straight up a mountain and then back down, but we were able to keep running the whole way even if it wasn't very fast at times.

Kendra did an amazing job and we both had a great time. The complete results are here.

Winter Park Cross-Country Super Loop

On July 8th, I participated in the 3rd race of the Winter Park series. The course was great, it was a gigantic loop on and next to the ski resort that was 15.7 miles long with lots of climbing and some fast descending. Here is a profile map of the course. All categories ran one loop, I lined up with the sport group again. It was lightly rainy the entire time and slightly chilly.

I ended up getting 3rd place this time, which I was very stoked about. I was only 3 minutes behind 2nd and 6 minutes behind 1st. I also beat the 4th place guy by less than 40 seconds! Complete results are here.

This ended up being my last mountain bike race of the year, but I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to next season.

Eldora Escape

On July 1st, I participated in my first Mountain States Cup mountain bike race. They take place throughout Colorado, New Mexico and sometimes Utah. This was a nice local one just up Boulder Canyon from my house.

The course was pretty hard, probably the hardest mtn bike race I've done. There was a really steep rocky singletrack uphill section, a steep, loose downhill section with several small drops and there were lots of muddy spots with several "puddles" (read lakes) that you had to ride through or around. There was also a very short steep climb that most people had to walk/run up. And we had to do 3 laps! Here is a map:

I ended up finishing in 5th place with a time of 1:47:11.80 which I was very please with. I was in 2nd place halfway into the first lap, but came out of my pedals on the steep climb and got passed by a few people. The complete results are here.

Kendra was kind enough to act as my water support and did a fantastic job! Love you, baby!

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!