Iron Pyrite, 2013

What?  Fool's Gold?


Yes.

There are a few steps between here and there, but I now have an official entry into the NUE Series championship race, the Fool's Gold 100 in Dahlonega, Georgia.

I also have a plane ticket (thanks Missy!) and a room reservation at a cute little hostel just outside of town.  And, thanks to the eternal support of my parents and Gary Faris, we even have a plane ticket for Erica to join me.

Georgia in September--sounds humid.  (Sorry about your hair, E.)  But the temps look reasonable and I hear the riding is damn fine.  Word is it's 100 miles of fast riding on a great singlespeed course through the Chattahoochee National Forest, with what appears to be a fast singlespeed field.

The steps to getting there?  Primarily the Point2Point.  See, this whole racing-in-Georgia thing is predicated on the idea that I might be in contention for the NUE singlespeed championship.  The Pfluginator has taken the title for something like the last 5 years--it's time to give him a fight.  We've faced off twice so far this season; he took first at the True Grit 100, and I finished first at the Tatanka 100.  Now we're both riding strong at this point in the season, and set up for a good showdown at the series finale.

But first I need to win the singlespeed division at the P2P in order to be in contention.

No pressure, right?

With a history of flatting and course errors, I have unfinished business to take care of in Park City this year.  Training has gone as well as can be expected, and I've kicked my own ass at a couple of local races in the last couple of weekends.  (Racing is the best training, right?)  Now I just need to drop the hammer at the P2P, and then rest up quickly to be ready to compete with Gerry for the Fool's Gold a week later.

Oof.


Towards that end, I added some inspiration to the LESter's toptube:

(By the way, if you're looking for some late-season competition and you're interested in traveling, there are still entries available for the Fool's Gold--let's get out there and crush ourselves!)  

Seeking Zen at the Pierre's Hole 100

The Stats:

• 90 Miles
• 14, 300' of climbing
• 1st-Place Singlespeed, 2nd Overall
• 8:28:59 to the finish

This.                Race.              Rocked!

Unbelievable.  I've gotten to compete at some great events this year, but Pierre's Hole takes the cake.  (And to have it at home makes it that much sweeter!)  Super well-run, gorgeous podium prizes, and a really well-built course that required technical riding skills, comfort with flat-out speed, lungs and legs for long climbs, and the ability to spin a high cadence while climbing pavement.  Massive fun.

Yep, loving the LESter.  It just fits so well, and the ride?!  Damn.
Photo: Tony Jewell

We started at dawn on a gorgeous morning in the Tetons, climbing immediately out of the start and spreading the pack nicely on our first foray out to Peaked Peak.  By the time we turned onto the new Peaked Trail singletrack I was hanging right behind Carey Smith and Nate Miller in the lead, with a few other geared riders spread behind us.

Winding up superbly-built switchbacks through alpine fields of wildflowers in the pre-sunrise light was spectacular.  Almost enough to make one forget that we were racing.

I followed those two into our first descent of 38-Special to Mill Creek which would drop us down to Teton Canyon--that's a long damn descent, and we were slated to do it 3 times!  They were able to open a gap on me by the time I arrived at the bottom but I could see them a few minutes up the road, so I figured they might still be within reach.

I shared that first Ski Hill Road climb with the three geared riders from the Peaked climb, swapping leads into a light early-morning breeze.  We spaced out a bit for the dusty descent of Bustle Creek but re-grouped for the dreaded crank up the Dry Creek climb.  (Word is that the Bustle-Dry Creek loop will be removed from the course next year, pending Andy Williams' ability to build-out the rest of the singletrack he has envisioned up at Targhee.)

Despite the steep, loose nastiness of Dry Creek I was able to put in a burst and get out ahead of the other guys, and continued opening my gap as the climb progressed.  That climb usually sucks the life out of my legs, but something clicked today and I was able to ride it continuously all three laps.  Not without fatigue, mind you--I was pretty worked by the time I topped-out, and thankful for a chance to recover on the short pavement spin back up to Targhee.

By the time I got out to Rick's Basin I was feeling good again and had a blast romping around the fast and flowy singletrack up there, once again in the midst of fields of wildflowers.

Through the wildflowers heading out for Lap 2.

Heading out into Lap 2 my body started reminding me that I was 1/3 of the way through a 100-mile race and might want to think about tempering my pace a bit.  I argued back that it was hurting just about right, and continued having a ball rolling around the Lightning Loop.  Then the second climb up Peaked began and my attitude changed.

Carey was one switchback above me, but my body forced me to realize that if I wanted to make it up the remaining 9000' or so of climbing in the race I was going to have to ride smarter.  Less balls-out charging up the climbs, more mindful spinning.  So I found a pace that would keep me from losing ground to Carey but would also allow me to "float" up the climb rather than grunting.

Which worked great, until the descent.  Then he disappeared into the ether and I spent the rest of the race chasing a ghost.

Regardless, my new approach to climbing worked out great--spinning up the pavement portions felt smooth, and even Dry Creek was manageable.  Once I let go of the need to hammer uphill and focused on my breathing and on riding smoothly and efficiently, everything felt achievable.  No need to walk, no gasping for air, minimal burning quads.  Zen riding?  Sure.

Rolling out to the final descent of Bustle Creek...

I rolled into Lap 3 feeling tired but feeling good, stoked in the knowledge that I would finish the race this year.  Erica was feeding me updates on how the race around me was progressing--Carey was going to stay out in front, and I had enough of a lead over Trevor Rockwell (the next singlespeeder) that I just needed to ride smart to win.

Woohoo!  The last trip up Dry Creek done!

So I stuck with the Zen riding plan for the climbs, and had a ball pinning it on the descents.  That last lap was hard (just a few twinges of cramping) and hot--the Garmin hit 95 degrees--but it was also really damn fun.  I loved spinning up the pavement; 34x21 gearing made it feel just about like being on a road bike.  Flying downhill was a blast, and the last lap around Rick's Basin rocked!  So fast, so fun.  Although I admit that I didn't really notice the wildflowers--I was focused on finishing.

Finished.

Look baby--I won!

And then there I was, 1st Singlespeeder and 2nd Overall to Carey, with a big hug from Erica, really glad that I wasn't heading out for another lap.

Sharing the podium with Trevor once again, along with Jason Brown, Tim Lucking, and Loren Gard.

The Teton area riders had a great showing overall--Carey and myself at the front of the 100, Gabe Klamer 3rd in the 100 Open, and Dave Byers 2nd in the 100-Mile 40+.  In the 50-mile event Amanda Carey stomped the women's field with Amy Fulwyler coming in 2nd, Mike Piker and Mark Llinares went 1-2 in the 40+ and Dave Saurman and Mark Hershberger went 1-2 in the 50+.  Then in the 50km race Ben Aufderheide won big with Garth Kaufman, Chris Owen, and Ian Miller in 2nd-4th, and Dan Streubel and Rick LaBelle went 1-2 in the 40+.  Yeah local crew--way to make it happen!

I've said it already, but I loved this race.  With the planned course changes, next year's event will be even better--I will be back.

For now, it's time to focus back on training in preparation for the Park City Point-to-Point, and hopefully the NUE championship tie-breaker at the Fool's Gold 100 in Georgia the following weekend!  

Just have to figure out a way to get myself there...

Pierre's Hole 50/100 Course Preview

On the fence about entering this weekend's Pierre's Hole 100-Mile/50-Mile/50KM?  Racing but won't have a chance to pre-ride the course?  Need a little stoke leading up to the big weekend?

I thought it would be fun to put together a video of this year's course, complete with miles of amazing new singletrack care of Andy Williams and Grand Targhee Resort--this year's Pierre's Hole course is better than ever.

It was drizzly on the day we went out to ride, but that just means the trails will be tacky and fast on race day!

Big thanks to Mr. Dan Streubel for joining me on the ride, and letting me showcase his hard-man calves.  (Sorry ladies--he's taken.)

Get after it!

After the Dust Settles

The Stats:

• 97 Miles
• 10,500' of climbing
• 1st-Place Singlespeed, 14th Overall
• 8:42:39 to the finish

Bend, Oregon is one of my favorite places to ride and the High Cascades 100 is one of my favorite races on the planet.  The trails are phenomenal, the course is well-marked, there are an enormous number of enthusiastic volunteers, and with almost 350 racers (including 30 singlespeeders!) it's as much an endurance festival as it is a race.

The course is one big 100-mile loop, which makes it even more amazing that this event runs so smoothly.

It hurt this year, and was phenomenally fun.  Sometimes simultaneously.  Not my greatest day in the saddle, but not my worst either.  Slightly longer course/more elevation gain/hotter weather...  Maybe I was just feeling wimpy.  Whatever it was that was a tough day on the bike!

Race director Mike changed the course a bit for the 2013 edition, adding some lovely higher elevation mileage on the Metolius-Windigo Trail through Happy Valley (which unfortunately was my time to suffer.)  My 34x19 gearing really hurt on the bigger climbs, but it was spot-on for the fast, rolling singletrack that makes up most of the race.

But, first things first.   Conditions were DUSTY around Bend!  Rutted corners were deep and powdery and the sand on the two-track stretches was deep enough to result in a skreetching halt if I lost the firm strip in the center.

We rolled out at dawn on a brief neutral start behind Mike's truck (after a few misfires of the starter's pistol), and Barry Wicks set a gentle pace on the 5-mile asphalt spin to our entrance to the dirt.  Perhaps too gentle--when we hit the dirt the pack was so huge that it was chaos, riding blind through the dust cloud kicked up by the herd of panicked cyclists.  Like skiing in a whiteout, I just kept pedaling and hoping that my bike stayed on the trail and didn't hit a rock.

Loving that early-morning light on Funner.
Photo: Oregon Velo

And then things spread out and became quiet.  I had only one other rider near me on the Larsen and Funner trails (some of the most fantastic, winding singletrack I've ever found.)  That was my favorite part of the race--flowing through the forest with early-morning shafts of sunlight piercing the thin cloud of dust in the air.  Lovely.

Then somewhere around mile 40 I started sputtering.  It's a shame because the riding on the Metolius-Windigo between miles 40 and 60 was rad--high-elevation singletrack through alpine meadows and forest with creek-crossings, great climbs and bombing descents.  My body just wasn't having it.  I mean, my legs kept turning but only with serious coaxing.  (My heart-rate monitor also crapped out around mile 45, so I spent the rest of the race "experimenting" with riding-by-feel.)  The climbs hurt bad, and then hurt worse.  Dark times.

Toughing it out on the Met-Win.  Oof.
Photo: Oregon Velo

Descending felt better, of course, and it felt really good to bomb down to the Dutchman's Aid station from the high point of the race.  I swapped out Camelbaks and a very energetic, friendly volunteer lubed my chain before giving me a push out onto the highway.  A short stretch of pavement on the Cascade Lakes Highway gave me an opportunity to drink some, stretch out my upper-body, and get my head back in the game for the rough, fun singletrack down to Lava Lake.

Cruising down to the Dutchman's Aid.
Photo: Oregon Velo

And then my body felt better.  I mean, I felt like I was 60+ miles into a long damn mountain bike race, but somehow my body was back into it.  I loved the fast, rough, challenging trail through and across the Mt. Bachelor lava rock, and by the time I grabbed a water bottle at the Lava Lake Aid the racing was back to being fun.

Even the punishing heat of the late-race climbs was manageable, and those climbs flowed more quickly than last year.  The Garmin registered a bit over 100-degrees Fahrenheit in there(!), but I was carrying plenty of fluids and just kept cranking. 

Through the whole thing I really only saw maybe three other riders (all on gears) and I wasn't ever sure I was in first-place for the singlespeeders.  The neutral mass out of the start was so big and chaotic that I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, and then there was all that time riding blind in the dust cloud once we hit the dirt--I wasn't sure who I had passed or who had passed me.   I'm used to having Erica or my parents there to keep me informed on how the race is progressing, but I was racing without a support crew at this one and nobody on the course was offering up any info beyond cheering, so I just stayed on the gas and told myself I had to ride my race--it would all shake out in the end.  Focus forward.

The HC100 finishes with a HUGE descent of the Tiddlywinks and Storm King trails, complete with banked turns, rollers, tabletops, and gap-jumps, which would be mind-blowing fun with fresh legs/arms/feet.  As it was they were pretty fun but I was glad to blast out onto the pavement for the 5 miles of frantic spinning to the finish.

And in the end I made it to the top of the singlespeed podium.  One thing I've learned from racing with Jerry Pflug is that you have to stay focused and keep pushing through the whole race; there's no room to soft-pedal and space out.  (That's hard to do in an 8.5-hour event!)  Thankfully I kept it together today, stayed focused and crossed the line about 10 minutes of Joe Santos in second place.  Two first-place NUE finishes and one second so far this season--enough to keep me in contention for the series win!

On the podium with Joe Santos and Doug Andrews. Race mascot sasquatch in the background.
Photo: Oregon Velo

Almost A National Champion

The Stats:

• ~40 Miles  (Slightly shy of the typical 50-mile marathon distance.)
• 6300' of elevation gain
• 2nd-place Singlespeed
• 3:21:11 to the finish
• The "# of Crashes" stat has been suspended indefinitely, given my blossoming ability to stay on my bike.  Should that change, it will return.

Independence Day weekend in Sun Valley--pretty sweet!  (More my speed than the warzone of large explosives that Lander, Wyoming turns into for July 4th.)  A relatively large posse of riders--Jason counted 18--headed west from the Tetons to compete in the Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships last Saturday.  If that title means nothing to you, Marathon-distance events are around 50 miles in the mountain bike world, and Sun Valley was chosen to host this year's national championships on the closing weekend of their Ride Sun Valley mountain bike festival.

(On a sidenote, it's a little bizarre that USA Cycling has deemed itself our governing body of bicycle racing, and designates seemingly arbitrary races as the national championships of a given discipline.  Though it's cool to have the championship events travel every couple of years, wouldn't it make sense to have them at the end of the season?  How can you have the 24-hour Championships in mid-June, let alone Marathon in early-July?  That's barely in time to come out of hibernation, let alone build the fitness to be a national champ.)

In any case, it was a fantastic weekend--gorgeous camping, mind-blowing riding, good friends.  The only downer was that Erica and Rue couldn't be there, or so I thought...

After a July 4th race course pre-ride, we spent Friday "resting up" for the big event.  (Lounging around, sitting in hot springs, tinkering with our bikes...)  It's been a long time since I felt this caught up on sleep before a race.  Not necessarily well-rested--I was still feeling fatigue in the legs from the Tatanka 100--but well-slept.

Photo: Evan Simms

And the singlespeed division didn't launch onto the course until 8:30--how civilized!  After watching the Pro's tear around the "parade loop" and out onto the course, we were called up after the Men's 35-39 division.  I had butterflies bouncing around my belly standing at the line with Carey Smith, Josh Krattiger, Tom Flynn...  Carey beat me by almost 17 minutes last year; was I strong enough to take him?  How strong were the boys from Boise this year?  Then the gun went off and it all went away; I was just racing with a crowd of singlespeeders, and loving it.

We were all in a pack for the parade loop and about a mile on the bike path--a peloton of 12 dudes with one gear each, frantically spinning our legs to get the hell off the asphalt.  Then Carey and I led the first lap up Cold Springs--dirt road to gravel service road to lovely singletrack, a sustained 2500' climb to the top of Baldy.  Carey even let me lead some of it before passing and leaving me to spend the rest of the race chasing his skinny rear-end.

I had him in view all the way up the first climb, with optimism about catching him, and then he was gone!  Course knowledge?  Bigger balls for the big descent?  Who knows--I never saw him again.

But I had a great race.  No cramping this time, just the joyous discomfort of a solid effort.  The second climb up Cold Springs actually felt better than the first--I was finally warmed up.  Riding downhill felt awesome and fun, including the weird man-made "rock-garden" just above the finish.  The riding in Sun Valley really is phenomenal, which translates to really phenomenal racing.

And I know I've been gushing about the LESter, but this thing blows my mind--such a fun, playful bike!  Super light, climbs like a goat, and it's totally changed my comfort with racing downhill.  Amazing on the long, fast descent of Warm Springs.

The icing on the cake was when I rode through the finish and Erica and the Ruester were standing there cheering me in!  At first my brain couldn't process who they were or how they came to be there, but then Erica was kissing me and it didn't matter.  She rallied for an early drive to Ketchum after driving home from Lander the night before--unbelievable!

A creek-soak recovery felt pretty good on a hot, sunny day.

In the end, Carey came across the line 5:43 ahead of me to take home the singlespeed Stars-And-Stripes jersey again this year.  Of course it would have been awesome to be on the top step, but I felt happy with my race despite being fatigued from the prior weekend's racing.  Last year Carey beat me by 16:41; I'm closing the gap!  Now I have another goal to shoot for next year...