Month: June 2012

Well, here went nothing!  My first mountain bike race!  I was super nervous, and completely psyched myself up to placing dead last… Dead last as in the last one off the trails, hours after the start.  I was fine if that was to happen.

I focused on hydrating well throughout the day.  I wasn’t going to race wearing my enormous Camelback backpack (I seriously need to get a smaller one…), and knew I wouldn’t have time to really fiddle with my bottle cage, so I prepared ahead of time.  I had a light breakfast of cereal, macaroni salad for lunch (it’s my unfortunate weakness), Oikos yogurt, and then a PB&J about 30 minutes before I headed up to the race.

Pulling into the trailhead I wanted to puke when I saw all the other racers.  I was nervous, alone, and felt out of place.  I got my bike off the car, and set off to register.  Paid my $5 and got my number place.  #524, okay, I can live with that… some people were friendly.  I cheerfully told many I planned on finishing last, which confused a lot of people.  Turns out the “leader jersey” for this race series is a squeaky horn, just like Mr. Penguin so people were assuming I was leading my class already!  Whoops!  (I refuse to take off Mr. Penguin, though… it’s not like I’m cheating in any way by having him!)

The Sheriff’s office was out ticketing like crazy for parking, so I rushed to fill out a form for Matt for when he got there (he was just photographing… racing is not his thing!).  Because of all of this craziness, I didn’t have a time to eat some Shot Bloks, which I intended to do.  I shoved a pack in my jersey’s back pocket along with my phone.  Before I knew it we were lining up and were off!

My friend and I immediately jumped out in the lead, for whatever stupid reason, because when the first climb came I got my butt kicked.

My lungs burned, legs burned.  Soon I was on Meadow for a descent.  Unfortunately, I was stuck on the singletrack behind another racer that wasn’t carrying the momentum that I was.  Then the climbs.  I shifted into the granny gears and just pedaled.  The faster racers passed, and I was fine.  I even made a few passes, which put a smile on my face!  Finally in Upper UW the trail turned to the descent, and that’s where I felt my speed increase.  I was finally able to get around one of the racers that was holding me up and I just flew!  Smile on my face!  Few more climbs, but they were as bad as I could carry momentum.  Got to Pole Creek, and powered up the climb to the Campground Bypass.  I was feeling accomplished.  I flew past Matt, giving him my “death smile” (I’m happy, but I’m dying!)  Up through the parking lot, and heard some cheering on which felt good.  Told the first aid station “I feel like I’m dying” on my way past.  First lap done!  Was sitting in 3rd place (I obviously didn’t know that until afterwards) with a time of 22:20 minutes.

Second lap was on!  I grabbed some sips before the climb.  By then my legs were numb and just powering through the motions steadily.  Passed one of the male racers, and found myself along on the trails, just the noise of my breathing and bike switching gears.  I felt damn good, and couldn’t help but to smile.  Then it started to go wrong… I got mildly confused and thought I got off the course so I paused until that male racer I passed came along to confirm I was on the right trail.  Then… well, I ate gravel at 20mph at the bottom of a hill.  *sigh*  I can’t say what really went wrong, except I think I panic braked, and the rear end got wonky.  I went over the handle bars, smashing my head and the left side of my body.  I pulled myself over to the side and sat there in disbelief while two of the girls in my category rode past.  One guy stopped to check on me, which I greatly appreciate!  (Thanks random guy!!!)

I got on my bike and continued on.  I won’t lie, I was feeling a bit dazed and wonky.  I lost a lot of my mojo but powered on, and was super cautious on the rest of the descents.  I came through the Bypass again, with Matt cheering me on, to which I screamed “Don’t you see all the blood?!  I think I have a concussion!”  Powered up to the parking lot, where another girl was cheering me on to the effects of “Good job… oh… holy sh!t, are you alright?”  And finally the finish!

48:22 minutes for the 6-6.5 mile course (my runtastic app malfunctioned on me and only got the first lap successfully saved… otherwise it was saying I was going 38mph in a straight line through the trees… hmmm.  So not sure of actual distance).

I rode over to my friend, who finished 10 minutes earlier.  He noticed the blood and his eyes got all huge.  Matt emerged from the trees and rushed over to see how I was.  Honestly, I was in great spirits!  I finished my first race, my legs didn’t hurt at all (minus where there was missing skin…), and I still finished ahead of two others in my class.  Not bad for my first mountain bike race!  A month ago I could barely ride the smallest of climbs on the Meadow Trail without stopping, and here I was… I made them all without stopping, yelling curse words, or chugging copious amounts of water!

We enjoyed some delicious elk burgers cooked up by Dewey from the Pedal House.  I had no appetite, so it took me nearly 2 hours to eat one burger, which I’m sure looked strange to everyone else.  I chatted with a high school classmate, who races in the Open class.  He crashed, too, so at least I wasn’t alone!  Always nice to see people, especially after 10 years!  They announced the top 3 in each class, drew some raffle prizes, and we then set out for home about 9pm.

I got home and checked the results.  Dammit, I could’ve placed 2nd if I didn’t crash and continued riding smoothly!  Definitely 3rd without the crash… DAMMIT!  But I still got all giddy seeing that I placed 4th in the Beginner’s Women class, and even beat out 3 of the men in their beginner class.  Here I was expecting to take hours, and finishing dead last and I actually put forth a really respectable effort!  I felt damn accomplished!

I was expecting to be extremely sore today, but I was proved wrong.  My skinned knee and elbow hurt the worse, especially when I leave them in one position too long.  My left hip (lovehandle area, LOL) is sore.  I just now noticed that my left collarbone aches a bit.  My chin has a “rug burn” type cut on it from my helmet, and swelled a bit, which looks mighty attractive, if I do say so myself!  But other than that, nothing unbearable!   My tumble at Curt Gowdy a few weeks ago left me in way worse shape.  I do not have any muscle soreness in my legs, which is nice (maybe it means I didn’t pedal hard enough…)

Needless to say, I CANNOT WAIT TO RACE AGAIN!  The next race in the series is in two weeks, and I plan on being there unless I land a job (which I’m really hoping on doing so I can get a road bike!).  I have some redemptive desires I need to act upon!  Until then I plan on hitting the trails more, and practicing more racing style rides (less stopping, less falling?) to build my endurance, especially on climbs.  I also want to continue to familiarize myself more with the trails, especially to learn the downhill parts more so I don’t have anymore panic braking moments.

Matt worked a long day, so I haven’t been able to get his photos, but I’ll most a post once I have some of his!

Today was the day for finding the crash site of United Airlines Flight 409, which I had mentioned a few posts back.  For some background… Flight 409 crashed October 6, 1955 en route to Salt Lake City from Denver.  Deviated from the flight path which was to avoid all the peaks in the Snowy Range (the plane could not fly higher than 10,000 feet due to be unpressurized), the DC-4 plane smashed into the side of Medicine Bow Peak about 50 feet from the top at 240mph.  All 66 people on board were killed, and at that time, it was the worst commercial aviation disaster in the United States (it only had the record less than a year, and remains the 43rd worst in US history).  Because of the stupidly remote, rugged terrain, the wreckage was never fully cleaned up.  The military was called in to destroy what was left with explosives and napalm, but despite all of that a lot of pieces of wreckage remain on the boulder fields below the site of impact.  Frankly, the terrain makes it damn near impossible to haul stuff out, along with it being federally protected, therefore making removing wreckage a felony (fine by me, I don’t need to be haunted by airline passenger ghosts!).

Wikipedia has a good general overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_409

Newsreel footage: http://www.efootage.com/stock-footage/54245/wyomingMedicineBowpeakpeaksmountainmountains

I’ve always had a pretty peculiar preoccupation with airplane crashes, probably due to what use to be an intense phobia of flying (I still fear being in a plane crash, though I do enjoy flying nowadays).  I’ve read about this crash before, and had heard about it from my parents and others while growing up.  So when I mentioned it to Matt and he suggested we find it, I was definitely interested!  We plugged GPS coordinates to googlemaps, and charted a rough path to get there, hoping we’d be able to find something.

We started out at the Lake Marie trailhead, but forged our own path over the boulder fields that litter the terrain below the sheer cliffs.  It was difficult climbing, and I was oh so thankful to have good boots for this attempt!  We hiked and hiked, working our way towards Lookout Lake, which seemed to be in front of where the wreckage should lay.

We made it out of the boulders to a small lake.  Ran into two guys from Florida that were just messing around and seeing how high they could climb.  We mentioned we were in search of a plane crash, which they had not heard about, and they wished us good luck, but expressed that it was possible it was under snow.

We bid the Florida guys farewell and continued on, hoping we would run into something soon… and WE DID!  A big, shiny, silver metal piece, right in front of us!!!  Could it be a piece of the plane?  I had my doubts because it was so low in the valley… hell, it could be someone’s trash, right?  Then I saw the rivets and other pieces!!  We had found the crash wreckage, and it was way easier than we expected, and looking up the boulders it was apparent that there was a lot more of it!

We continued climbing up, coming across more and more bits and pieces, including one of the engines.  I was definitely feeling a sense of awe over the amount of wreckage still laying on the mountain after 57 years, and the magnitude of the whole event.

We had to stop climbing just short of 11, 000 feet due to the snowfield, which would’ve been way too slippery to continue up.  We ate a quick lunch, and snap photos of the amazing landscapes that were below.  I reflected on what it must’ve been like to smash into a mountain at 240mph… though, honestly, it would be the way to go: a nice, fast, unexpected death.  I’m sure only the pilots saw it coming, and even that can be up for debate.  It also reminds me how much air travel has become safer.

Now the steep descent down the loose rocks… I tucked my DSLR away in my backpack so I would have both hands free.  My knees took a beating, but we slowly made it down, finding more and more pieces of wreckage, including some very large aluminum pieces.

Mission accomplished!  I’m so happy our hike was successful and we found what we were looking for!  I was unsure we would find it, as all we had were some GPS coordinates, and a severe lack of “modern” day information on the crash and how much wreckage was left.  It is really difficult terrain to cross, so I am sure that keeps the casual hiker/curiosity seekers away.  The wreckage does not really reflect sunlight and blends in with the geology well, helping keep it concealed.

Our route back to the car took us on the Lake Trail between Mirror Lake and Lake Marie.  Overall it was a 3.21 mile hike, with about 890 feet of elevated ascended (most of it in the wreckage field, which was nearly a vertical climb at times!).  I’m now hanging out in my new SmartWool compression socks, trying to recover from the pounding on my knees, ankles, and toes.  I do like my new boots, and I love the fact I can walk through mud and water (and lakes!) and the water just rolls off of them!  My feet did swell considerably, which made the boots fit a bit tighter than intended, but that can be solved by not crawling up and down boulder fields!

Matt has more photos, so maybe he’ll share some with me 🙂

Today I headed out on my first solo trip with my mountain bike.  Matt is out of town for work, and I am determined to keep on a good routine of riding, so that’s that!  I decided to just do a short bit at Happy Jack on some of the trails I haven’t been on before.  I am thinking about racing in the Laramie Mountain Bike Series race this coming Tuesday, and figured I should familiarize myself with some of the trails that are often used for the beginner category.

I felt like crap!  Couldn’t catch my breath, and it was oh so hot out.  I immediately started thinking about how bad I would probably do at the race, especially if it is mostly uphill (which seems to be the case).  It wasn’t my legs burning or anything, just my lungs and that sort of fitness thing.  But I kept on going… I took Meadow up to Ridge, then on Blackjack Loop, to Adler, then back up Adler to Meadow to the Campground Bypass.  Whoa, why did I now just discover the bypass?!  It is so much better than riding the campground roads, which have been horrible since they did whatever the hell they did to them a few weeks back to make them all sandy and loose.  I briefly stopped at my car for a drink and some Shot Bloks, and went back through the campground to the bypass again, just because I liked it that much! 

I almost T-boned a squirrel while flying down Adler   I saw the little critter on the side of the trail, and of course he decided to run right in front of my tire when I got closer… I’m pretty sure I ran over the tip of his tail!  I was doing about 16 mph, so the last thing I wanted to do was slam on my brakes and tear myself up.  I hope he escaped without harm, though the damn thing shouldn’t have ran out like that!  I do think this is my first wildlife close encounter, haha! 

Overall, 4.38 miles in a total time of 42 minutes, 9 second (I didn’t pause it when I stopped to take the above photo and answer some texts, however… either way, yes, it was slow!).  I did have a good high average speed of 6.24mph, which is nearly double than what I’ve seen on other rides.  So overall it wasn’t bad and I familiarized myself with some trails that I had been missing out on.  I know my fitness has improved A LOT since I first started riding, but I still get so out of breath and sluggish.  I really do want to enter a race, mostly for fun, but I don’t want to be the painfully slow person everyone has to waste time passing.  So we’ll see… I know I could’ve stayed out longer today, as I finally had started to feel okay by the end of my ride, but still called it a day.

Tomorrow I am riding Happy Jack again with a friend of mine.  It should be a good mental push for me, as I am not apt to whine nearly as much as when I go with Matt, and I’ll be wanting to impress! 

Sunday Matt and I are planning to hike in the Snowies.  I kinda wanted to bike, but then I figured that a day off to rest might be good in case the miles rack up tomorrow.  Tuesday night is the race, so I’ll be debating about that for the next few days.  Just pretty hesitant…

On Monday Matt and I decided to take a quick ride up Hwy 130 to “the top” – as I call it.  I absolutely love going up there, reminds me of my childhood, and to this day I still think it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to.  We have been making plans to climb Medicine Bow Peak sometime this summer.  I climbed it 4 times from ages 8-11, so I wanted to see how it was at my ripe old age of 28.

Matt ended up wanting to wander around Lake Marie quite a lot, so I carefully hobbled along in my Converse sneakers and short shorts… obviously, not very well dressed for hiking!  I made the mistake (??) of telling him about the United Airlines crash in 1955, so now he is absolutely determined to find the crash site and hike to it.  I must admit, it is a cool idea, so I’m going along with it.  But it did consume the rest of the evening… googling, mapping, etc.  Which also provided me with a way to summit Medicine Bow Peak that I didn’t know existed.  During my school trips up there, we always left from the Sugarloaf area.  Turns out there’s a trailhead at Lake Marie that takes you all the way across the ridge to the peak.  Totally excited to do this!

I was absolutely shocked at the utter lack of snow on top… last year, to the day of June 18th I drove up there with a friend, and we couldn’t leave the road due to feet and feet of snow.  Definitely doesn’t bode well to the drought and fire conditions we’re seeing this summer.

Just a few photos…

So now that Matt is on a mission to find the crash site, and I’m on a mission to climb Medicine Bow Peak, I knew I needed to invest in some hiking boots.  Usually I would just wear sneakers on our hikes, but since I have crappy ankles I was always worried about hurting myself and I wanted something that was waterproof.  So I journeyed over to Sierra Trading Post to find something to fit my needs.  I’m a sucker for pink or purple things (um, hi, have you seen my bike?!), so a pair of purple Asolo Advance GTX’s caught my eye.  They were on closeout and have awesome ankle support and are purple, so I couldn’t resist!  So I now own hiking boots… holy crap, sometimes I really gotta step back and chuckle over how my life has really turned around in the past few months!

Mountains and hikes, here I come!

It’s amazing every time I get out on my bike, and I feel how I am getting stronger and faster.  It’s not happening over night, but is definitely occurring.  A few weeks ago I usually had to hike-a-bike anytime things got steep, especially near the end of a ride.  Last night I did over 3 miles of steep climbing at the end with all ride-a-bike!  I dunno, it’s just an awesome feeling.  I went from a completely sedentary lifestyle about 4 weeks ago to this point.  Makes me want to hug myself!

I’ve started to realize I’m really bad at writing in this, and have totally forgotten to write about South Dakota and our 30 mile ride on the George S. Mickelson Trail during Memorial Weekend!  Shame on me!

Well, the weather didn’t want to cooperate that weekend.  It was rainy and incredibly foggy, so when we drove up to Mount Rushmore on the 26th, we realized it would be stupid to spend money to look at clouds.  We figured we’d head up to Deadwood, cruise around on the bikes, and call it a day.  Our detour took us to Hill City, which is where the trailhead for the portion of the trail I wanted to ride was located.  We gave it some quick thought, and decided just to ride the trail instead of doing anything else.  Found a grocery store, stocked up on Lunchables (our #1 biking lunch option!!), and changed into our biking clothes and headed out towards Mystic.

I quickly got too hot and shed about 3 layers, and downed a Clif Bar.  The disadvantage to our whole idea is that we never ate a proper breakfast because we were just expecting to hang out with carved presidents, not bike 30 miles.

The first 8 miles was a pure climb.  I felt like death, but slowly my legs went numb, so all I felt was the aching in my butt!  Even at 8 miles, it was going to be my longest ride yet, but I was determined to see these two rail tunnels further on the trail.  By this time we were not sure we’d go all the way to Mystic, but dammit, I had to see a tunnel!  After the shelter at Redfern, we pretty much flew downhill the whole way.  Hell, Matt reached 25 miles an hour even!  Even though I was smiling because we were going downhill, I had that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that all this speed meant a torturous climb back UP.  I hate going UP.  Have I ever mentioned that before?  UP = evil. 

BAM!  Tunnel A!  This my friends, made the trip worth it.  For some background, the Mickelson Trail is a rails-to-trails project, so it is filled with old rail trestle bridges, and 4 tunnels.  I managed to run through a pool of bat guano, yay me.  Between that and the cow and horse poop, I think this was a very poopy ride for my bike and I….

Little Matt, big tunnel!

I was stupidly excited for this tunnel!

I’ve decided that’s my official “I am dead” face!  I was even too tired to do my typical dorky flexing my arms pose.

We collapsed into the car, ordered Pizza Hut on the way back to Rapid City, picked it up, and proceeded to down a box of cheese bread in under 5 minutes, and then inhaled a large Hawaiian pizza upon getting to the hotel.  After a shower, I’m pretty sure I didn’t move the rest of the night!

So then on Monday (Memorial Day), we figured we’d ride the 8 mile portion from Mystic to Rochford, and back, for a nice ride through another tunnel.  Unfortunately, the wind was downright horrendous and chilly, so our plans changed.  We decided to ride to Tunnel C, and then back and call it a day.  We ended up doing about 5 miles, which was bad considering I was still majorly tore up from the 30 miles.

Tunnel C on the trail!

One of the super long, super high trestle bridges!

And that was our South Dakota adventure!  It’s been nearly two weeks, and I actually still have a sore tailbone/deep pelvis, which slightly concerns me.  I’m sure continually riding on it does not help.  Matt and I have wondered if my seat is a bit too narrow for my sit bones (yay child bearing hips!), so eventually I might look at different seats.  I’m also thinking that if we do another long ride like this I am definitely investing in some higher end chamois for more padding.  My Pearl Izumi Select line of thermal tights aren’t bad, but I don’t think they’re really made for 30+ miles of riding.  We’ll see… someday we do want to do the whole 110 mile ride from Deadwood to Edgemont!

I quickly learned that biking in normal walking/running shoes pretty much sucks, especially if any amount of hiking has to occur.  With the temptation of REI’s Anniversary Sale, I found some pink and grey Pearl Izumi X Alp Drift II mountain biking shoes that I couldn’t resist. Matt was kind enough to bring home a pair after work, but they were too small 😦  From what I’ve read, Pearl Izumi shoes run about one size smaller, so I had to order in a 41. Anyways, long story short (I’m a wordy person…), they arrived at the store last Thursday, so we

picked them up and headed up to Lory State Park west of Fort Collins, CO to do some riding after work. 

I really like the shoes!  It definitely helps having a stiffer sole.  The only huge issue I had was the plate that covers the cleat mount is slippery, so my feet could come flying off the pedals at the worse moments.  Obviously this will change once I mount the cleats that came with my new platform/clipless hybrid pedals that I ordered in with the shoes.  Other than that, I really like the shoes, they’re comfy on and off the bike, and have good ventilation.

Anyways, Lory State Park is awesome!  We did two laps of the Valley Loop trails, for a total of just a little over 10 miles.  Lots of speedy singletrack mixed with some rocky challenges.  This marked the first time I never hiked-a-bike during any portion, so another accomplishment!

It really made me wish we lived in Fort Collins, so we could play around here more often.  Luckily, it’s not horribly far from Cheyenne, so we can make do, and it’s a great place to catch a ride after Matt gets off of work. 

Tomorrow I think we are going to hit up Curt Gowdy State Park for our ride.