What's inside your knee?

Today I got an MRI of my achy knee. This should clear up if it's tendonitis, a stress fracture, or something else. Too bad I don't know what to look for in all these images...

End-of-the-week fatigue

A few photos from Friday evening:



And a view from yesterday's brief lunch stop:


Today Dan and I headed south for some dry trails. These were a neat mix of buff, swoopy, fast singletrack and chunky, steep, canyon descents. Any place where you can ride nearly 40 miles with minimal repetition of trails is pretty special. Now my legs are tired after two high-volume weeks...

Holy macaroni!

Last night I took the Lenz up to the winter testing grounds and had a wonderful ride racing the sunset to the top of the climb. I lost by 5 minutes or so, but the 2000' descent was so much fun that I started today's ride off with another trip back up there. And once again, I was grinning ear to ear the entire way down. That's got to be one of my favorite descents, yet I only know of a few other people who ever ride it. Perhaps it has something to do with the rather challenging and unrelentingly steep 2000' slog up to the top. But I've come to terms with that slog, and I now actually find some enjoyment in it.

Today's ride continued for many more hours, exploring a slice of new territory, climbing a lot, and ending right at dark as usual. It looks like it was ~70 miles with more than 10k' of climbing. At one point, I was rewarded with what is probably the most stunning viewpoint I've found anywhere in the foothills. It's a shame that private property (a mine, in fact) prevents it from being anything more than a dead end with an amazing view. But I'll definitely head back there at some point. There may also be one more gem to explore in that area, but that'll have to wait for another day. I'll put up some photos later...


Now it's time for sleep - in six hours I need to be awake to pack gear, fix up the bike, and swing by Dan's for a trip south to find some good dirt riding.

Scott's race is tougher than your race

Scott just announced what's likely to be the toughest true mountain bike race in the world, beginning at the Mexican border on April 23: the Arizona Trail Race. Almost entirely singletrack, the winner will probably take a solid 7 days.

And the real kicker - this beast crosses the Grand Canyon where bike tires are not allowed to touch the ground. Make sure you have a comfortable way to carry your bike for 20+ miles!

Redundancy

Today I played hooky and pedaled out of town at 8:30. It was 24 deg at home, 42 deg at the north edge of Boulder, 14 in Hygiene, and highs were forecast to be in the upper 50s in Boulder and mid 40s east of town. The inversion continues.

Anyway, I headed north to ride one of my favorite routes. It was a great ride, as usual, but Rist Canyon and Stove Prairie Road were even snowier and icier than I had expected, so it was entertainingly treacherous at times, both going up and coming down.


I got home as the sun set and looked up in the training log when I last did this ride in the winter. It turns out a it was almost exactly a year ago when I again played hooky. Only that day I got an ice cream sandwich somewhere along the way. No such luck today. The ice cream sandwich shop was closed.

Some days I enjoy the plains

I had planned on taking the skis and skins up to the Indian Peaks today, but for some reason, I got up and felt like taking the road bike out for a spin. 7 hours later I returned home in the dark with a satisfied grin and very cold toes. The paved roads were mostly dry, and a strong inversion kept the temperatures low enough that the dirt roads were mostly left frozen.

I didn't see anyone else on a bike after the first hour. Actually, I've never seen any other cyclists out in this area, even in the summer.

Alexis came along for half the ride

Brr! The temperature dropped fast after the sun dropped below the horizon. Flocks of hundreds of geese chased the sun into the mountains.

The day I almost killed Dan

I'm back in Boulder now, where it's snowy but moderately warm. By moderately warm, I mean that today it got above freezing in the foothills, which was warm enough for me to be eager for a long day in the saddle. I coerced Dan into joining me, and I think now he would be kicking himself, except that doing so might bring back the cramps in his legs. We headed out at 9:30 and dropped back into town at dusk. Much of our time was spent on snowy dirt roads that pointed toward the gleaming blue sky.



You sure can't complain about this kind of early January mileage in the foothills. Although I'm not sure Dan will ride with me again in the near future...

Crust surfing

Yesterday I headed out with Colorado Trail Race veteran Dennis Helton. We went up on one of the local singletrack mainstays, unsure of how snowy it would be. Well, we ended up riding for almost 5 hours, rarely seeing any dirt at all. Instead, we slowly rode the slippery crust up to Squirrel Gap and then turned around and slid, crunched, surfed, and crashed our way back down. After the blog/facebook posts from Joe, Mike, and Jill, it seems that this sort of riding is par for the course all over the country this week.

Steady climb without much room for straying off the firm snow at the center of the trail

Green leaves in winter are for some reason slightly disconcerting

Lucy chases after Dennis

We cleared quite a few downed trees from the trail

Strange ice crystals growing out of the ground

All the stream crossings eventually led to two frozen up derailleur pulleys on my bike

Gentle, precise steering required, or else...

Dennis lost traction on an off camber section and slid down 15 feet, narrowly avoiding landing in the water below

More marvelous ice crystals

The Blue Ridge

Another chilly, windy day in Appalachia. Armed with a far nicer bike than I rode the other day (courtesy of another former Midwest roadie, Chris Strout), I headed through Bent Creek and up to the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway for a mellow 5-hour ride.

It's strange how much green there is here in the winter

After an hour of icy 2-track climbing, I arrived on the Parkway. It's closed to traffic right now due to snow, downed trees, landslides. That means its the icicles time to come out and play.

Nice views

Highway hike-a-bike

Solid crust riding for long stretches

Today I'm heading down into the Pisgah with one of Matthew Lee's friends. He's apparently an all mountain kind of guy.

His first question on the phone was, "How are your technical skills?"

"I'm on a hardtail, so nothing too gnarly," I replied.

He laughs.

This oughta be interesting.

Western winter to eastern winter

Merely a few days ago, I was amusing myself with winter in the Indian Peaks...




And then I flew half way across the country, looking forward to some Pisgah singletrack during a week of vacation. Unfortunately, the big dump of snow never melted off, so only some of the trails have much dirt showing through. But much to my liking (and the dismay of all the locals, apparently), the highs have struggled to reach 30, or even 20, so the mud is all frozen! I borrowed a sort-of-functional bike from one of Maggie's housemates and explored some of what Bent Creek has to offer. The trails there aren't anything to brag about, but they're pretty sweet for being right on the edge of town (and out my temporary back gate).




That's all for now. Tomorrow Maggie has to work, so I'll head out for a longer ride. Perhaps I'll shoot south on the Blue Ridge Parkway and weave my way back on trails...

2009. Here and gone in a flash!

The requisite "best of" list for 2009...
Most memorable adventures:

5. All the moab trips. The Rim Ride, Kokopelli Trail Race, White Rim, and all the other great rides...always memorable.

4. The Sag-Bo training ride. This was the final shake-down before the Tour Divide, following nearly 300 miles of jeep trails, gravel roads, and Colorado Trail singletrack from Saguache back home to Boulder.

3. Arizona Trail 300. An incredible race on a phenomenal course, with rain, snow, frigid temperatures, many flats, knee problems, and serious racing. Setting a new course record was just icing on the cake.

2. Baffin Island. It was another great summer of mostly successful field work, neat new discoveries, many new questions, and a few too many close encounters with polar bears for my own liking.

1. Tour Divide. This'll be one that's tough to top in any year.



The best gear (most of these are gear-intensive activities):

5. MSR Lightning Ascent snowshoes. These aren't cycling-related like almost everything else on here, but they do go along on bike rides some times, and they're so light I barely notice they're strapped to my back unless it's windy. And once off in the deep snow or steep, icy slopes, they do their job quite well.

4. Gore Alp-X cycling rain gear. This is the only rain gear I've ever had that's kept me dry through anything. And believe me, they've seen pretty much the worst weather you could throw at them in the western US this year.


3. Montbell Thermawrap UL jacket. It's orange, puffy, light, and has helped me through some very cold and dark times in many of the ultras this past year.

2. Pearl Izumi hike-a-bike shoes. I can't say much about these shoes, because they're not officially on the market yet, but I've spent the past year destroying them for the guys at Pearl, and they've been on my feet in every long ride done in the past 14 months. My feet have been very, very happy, no matter how much hike-a-bike there is.

1. Salsa Dos Niner Tour Divide bike setup. This was perfect - relatively light, very reliable, quite comfortable, and as durable as required for this sort of racing. Highlights - the Epic bags that still show almost no wear despite all the abuse they took, the wheels built by Mike C around White Industries hubs (which are still rolling smoothly after 4000+ miles), the Avid Elixir CR brakes, and the White Brothers Magic 80 fork. I'd put these same parts on again if I had to do it all over.


Biggest surprises:

5. Not racing much cyclocross for the first time in many years. A nagging knee injury and desire to spend more time mountain biking up in the alpine were to blame.

4. Picking up running. Again, blame the knee injury.

3. Finding 1.0-1.5 million-year-old glacial deposits on central Baffin Island. They shouldn't be there, but they are, and they tell a neat story about the evolution of the continental ice sheets and subglacial landscape over the past 2.5 million years.

2. NSF funding. My PhD research on Baffin Island is now fully funded for the next 2.5 years!

1. How well my body adapted to the Tour Divide. The first week was a bit rough, but the legs got used to ~150 miles per day, the butt used to 16 hours in the saddle, and the engine got used to running on 6000 calories of gas station food. Not too bad. (Photo by Chris Plesko)


Biggest disappointments:

5. Yak Trax. They seemed fragile when I bought them, but I thought they'd last longer than 3 weeks.

4. Crank Brothers pedals, again. They never lasted long, their springs bend, the cleats wear out quickly, and I'm tired of having to replace them so often. I only have a few pairs left that are in ok shape, so it's almost time to replace them all.

3. Incessant mud. It seemed to be everywhere this year. From Camp Lynda in January to the Tour Divide in June, I think every long ride had more than its fair share (other than the AZT300...that mud was frozen). This took its toll on everything. (Photo by Chris Plesko)

2. Knee pains. There was a lot of physical therapy, bike fit adjustments, and frustration this year due to knees. And it's not all solved yet.

1. Maggie having to quit her job in Saguache. It should have been an awesome job, but sometimes the people involved are too tough to deal with. And I lost my great excuse to go hang out in one of the best parts of Colorado.

Honorable mention:
Riding on my favorite trails...

And the new bike, which hasn't yet seen enough use to make onto the 2009 list