106 pirates and 2 rocket ships

I went to Boulder last week, was lucky to catch up with Tressa/ raid Ray's plums to make some plum sauce/ get spoiled w/ sports food and sponsor goodies from Zack and oh did I mention the bikes!

The 09 top fuels.

We debuted them for their virgin rides in the CB classic yesterday. The CB classic is a pirate 'race/ride' A soul ride 89 miles of 12000feet. We basically talked and goaded Kelly Magelky into teaming up w/ us and doing it solo too... as our 1st lap guy he could do double duty. At 11pm on Friday night an innocent comment... its marked isn't it? from Kelly. Um... actually its not marked... oh crap .. the best we could do... improvise directions...

Sat: 30 degrees F, 8am, 106 riders ...Kelly is a great sport, he rode 2 laps of an unmarked course and survived! In the meantime handed off to Brian and then me... Our team won the overall and the team race. But more importantly we had a great day out and:

HOLY COW.. I can't exclaim enough. Our new bikes!! They are incredible. I am nearly loathe to get used to riding it as the norm as it felt amazing. and I want a little to keep that feeling! I (almost.. just one creek crossing mess up)cleaned the Dyke trail.. for real...it had me in disbelief what I was climbing and maintaining traction on. This bike is ridiculously exciting!Come find us at the XTERRA nationals next week in Tahoe and we'll let you see it for yourself. I'm am so excited to have this bike to race.. did I say its nearly half a pound lighter than my hardtail/ with the exact same components and the suspension is so smooth... How is this possible? who cares!

Cactus Eaters and Green espresso

I spent the whole day at home yesterday: I cannot remember the last time I did that. It was great, I cleaned up/and then read a book untill 11pm at night. The book was the Cactus eaters by Dan White. About walking the Pacific Crest trail between Mexico and BC Canada. It was a neat read.

It fed my yearning for adventure. I mean the places/people/experiences are really the reason I live my life. You think about some of the silly/annoying/bizarre/difficult things that happen and thats what is memorable.

Like for me: the time I decided to sleep in the van in the Mesquite parking lot outside a Casino in 95 degree weather.. it was free...travelling in style: when I had to go to the bathroom at 5am... drove to the side door, Pj's and early am gamblers!

Or the time I contracted the Duck Virus from swimming in Lake Mission Veijo and racing in Idyllwild with 100 itchy welts spreading all over my body/ with the flies on the brutal hike a bike there: I won /looked like a creature from the deep/was so itchy I couldn't stand even walking for 2 days/couldn't take the steriod medicine due to the Xterra the following week/misery, and of course look back w/ good memories.

I also bid and won an espresso machine on Ebay yesterday. My excitement is tempered only as Brian doesn't know... yet... Wonder if I can sneak it into the house? or maybe pose it as a birthday present for him?

Back to work and training today: Get the girl out of the house! (before I buy anything else!!)

Fantastic weekend

Followed by a little frustration. An update to our Maui Flights in my inbox today, showed no return flight from Honolulu? Hmmm... So an hour and a half later I'm supposed to be satisfied with our agents will take care of it, right now the flight was cancelled. Great... Good thing I noticed?

Oh well... on w/ life for today eh.

Our weekend was amazing: Lenny and Tron ( Nick and Parker) came to stay, providing allot of amusement, riding and entertainment.
I got the end of my hard week training in: Masters Swim Fri night, running workout with the Western cross country team Saturday am, This shattered us and the ensuing pm Nick and Parker ride On Teocalli ridge was brutal!, if not beautiful..., Sunday am Bay of chickens Lake swim, and pm Hartmans MTB ride.
The best part is this week is my well deserved EZ week... Well Ann calls it EZ, in all honesty is more low volume and high intensity, and I'll take it.

Amid the training we all had some great dinner's, nice wine, and entertainment. The boy's entertainment included allot more beer and bar's....

www.supportjamiewhitmore.org

On this Site you can keep up to date with developments about the Silent Auction in Tahoe : Oct 3 and 4th. The site will be updated with some of the great items up for auction.
You can also keep up to date on future fundraising, buy rocking t-shirts, make a donation and show your love!

Thyme, sage, purple potatoes,I really love food!

Feel so lucky today, Our friend Keri gave us some fish from her parents trip to Alaska ( Cod, Halibut, Rock fish... Heaven!), and the health food store has local produce @15% off all week.

11950

Brian and I rode an amazing ride yesterday. It was of course longer or harder than either of us had remembered. Topping out at 11950 we rode for ages longer above 11500. I suffered rather well on the climbs, which was fine, and got my intervals in easily. As high mountain rides often do... it got more technical, ridiculously steep and loose toward the saddle causing me to mess up alot and feel very head poundy and woozy! I saw a Marmot laughing at me.... maybe it was my imagination.

We had been riding for about 2 hours when we came across a huge metal gate with a posted/trespass sign. So we debated what to do. Turn around... ? ( so sad as we'd grovelled up a climb for basically 2 hours and were about to hit the downhill single track). It was nearly 6 oclock so we decided if we got caught we'd plead 'impending darkness and safety'. 100m later we passed the sign for the other side of the private property... Phew!

We've since found out more.. the owner bought this property specifically as it bordered national forest and had a trail. He apparently made allot of money in Telluride selling land in a similar situation back to the government. In this case he was turned down so he trucked in several thousand dollars in metal gates and signage to the middle of nowhere and closed the trail! C'mon... you buy a piece of scree above treeline purely to make money then close it! I have a very strong opinion about this. If a trail is marked, mapped, exists is 99.9 % forest service land .... it should be regulated to stay open if the .01 % land is sold.

Anyway the descent was amazing.

Afterward we took Donny to the wine bar for Sushi. Donny is a client of Brian's and hadn't ever eaten Sushi before. It was really fun. We were really hungry. Our waitress even came over to see that all the items checked where for us ( and not mistakes/from a previous order etc...) Of course we ate everything and the bill was a bit on the scary side.

25 degrees warmer and Silent Auction

We continued with our Thursday morning Lake swim's today. It seemed surreal to me as we've also started Master's at the college. Jon the instructer is really good and its worth the effort to make the 6.30 -8pm time slot. It means home at 8 to eat, sleep, alarm, coffee and swim again at 7am. I think I even dreamt swimming.
The air temp was a tad warmer this week than the 29 we where treated to last Thursday, but it was still 25 degrees warmer in the water than on the shore. I think today marked the last of the summer swimmers our group fo 5 is going to be whittled to 3 next week.

There is going to be a Silent Auction for Jamie Whitmore at Xterra National Championships in Tahoe next month. Many of you know that she is having some serious health problems. If you would like to make a product donation please email me. If you don't have my email leave your contact on a comment here and I will follow up.
Its really awesome, I think the Auction is going to gain alot of momentum and raise a good amount of money to help out. Plus be a great way for the athletes in Tahoe to buy some neat stuff. Jamie's coach Neal Henderson for example has donated a 3d bike fit and physiology test from Boulder Center for Sports medicine. Brian and I are donating custom Trek/VW ( can't be purchased anywhere else) Tri Suits. (And you know the mountain bikers out there all want a trisuit... its the anti baggie and pro Lycra fashion!!!!!) You can check up on Jamie through her website http://www.jamiewhitmore.com/ .

CB Classic - mark the date

Fall Classic 08

Wraps up the Rocky Mountain Bike season. And marks our build to Xterra Nationals and Worlds. 9 races for me since the 21st August. I'm feeling fit and strong, a block like this works for me. Yesterday though... I did forgo exercise to visit the library.
Brian won the circuit race and 2nd in the crosscountry. Kelly podiumed both events. The XC was awesome, perfect riding, perfect temperature, Epic climbing loop, a variation on the Firecracker 50 loop backwards. I won the circuit race and crosscountry. Kelly Mattingly (2nd place pro woman) descended super fast and had me working hard in the XC. The last descent in from Boreas Pass took what seemed like half and hour and I was riding to hold her off. Very Valid as at the line the gap was 40 seconds.

The power of suggestion

I filed for an extension on our taxes earlier this year. Have I mentioned this before... note to self... do em on time... time just makes it harder. Anyway its been project numero uno this week and am nearly seeing the light at the end of the receipt pile!

My motivation has been flagging a bit, I'm still tired from the past 3 weeks, today's run with LT intervals and then ride with LT intervals highlighted it too as I could only get my HR up to a sluggish 160... ( or maybe my time at 10 000ft just means the 7700 of home is easy on my body?!).

My ride was actually pretty funny, as I pulled out the single speed to ride. My thinking went along the lines of... 8 min hill repeats... I'll just crank the single up an appropriate grade and effort will take care of itself. What ended up happening though was me spinning in from Hartmans rocks. SLOWLY. so slowly. so painfully boring and under geared ( or is it over geared? too easy anyhow)
Sandi I wished you where in town today.. pull out the violin strings but I was craving company.

Anyway when the motivation flags sign up others and sign up to race. Its more fun that way. Less alone time. So tomorrow at 7 we are meeting for a group Blue mesa lake swim. Then on Friday we are driving over to Breckenridge for the fall classic circuit race and cross country race. Fun, friends, the rec center for swimming, Sushi and Thai, in a cool mountain town, an enjoyable way to train. Plus the D o double g is off to a vacation in the kennel for the weekend.. footloose and fancy free

Hopefully its a classic fall weekend and Breckenridge will be more mellow than it was 4th of July. Plus I have a little redemption to find for myself on the Classic ( aka firecracker 50) course. That one nearly broke me that day.

cheers
Jen

Dara, Mckenna and Brianhead NMBS.

I was intending to write a silly post about the freebie meal -post racing and my love of Onion rings and ketchup.
But I just read Dara's blog about the birth of her daughter Mckenna this past weekend and the post moved me. Congratulations!

We - meaning Brian and I raced in the NMBS national mountain bike finals this past weekend again in Brianhead Utah. the cross country was one lap of the same course we had raced 2 laps on the previous week... so we all knew it pretty well.
Saturday had the Stxc and in spite of a small field the racing was good. I led for a while mid race purely because the pace was kinda slow and I didn't really care about the outcome. Not fully commited to the outcome isn't the way to win a short track though so when the attacks began I dropped to 7th. My teammate Lea Davison won which was really awesome.

It seemed like we waited forever to get the XC underway. Part of this I think was because it started at 2pm and part of it was because I knew we were leaving to start driving home afterward... so I was keen to get racing.
The road climb was mellow for over half of it as the guys at the front controlled the pace, then an increase happened followed by a real jab of intensity - pain at 10 000ft. I have this situation in my cycling racing right now where I am super strong and consistent and excellent on the flats and slight uphills. But man am I hurting with steep climbs and accelerations in pace. So that was my race. I rode very strong and hurt when the girls accelerated. For the whole upper loop and climb I was in 8th, with Kelli Emmet just in front of me and just in front of her a pack of 4 women ( 2-6th). It had been that way for an hour and I couldn't bridge up.
Hitting the downhill in no mans land was hard as I was going fast but without a reference of others its hard to know if its quick enough. At one point ( dark hollow is really technical) I was realising I was probably losing time but I was on my bike and riding - so that is a good thing too! anyway I finished 8th and felt rock solid and strong.
Talking with Brian on the way out, he said he felt the same. Its perfect really, with 3 xterra's and 6 mountain bike races in the past 5 weeks, I'd say we have a great training block and to feel spunky and speedy would be a big ask. The increase in fitness will come over the next couple of weeks and to come off this training feeling strong is great.
cheers
Jen